California Fish Market Restaurant San Francisco [Review]

Located in the bustling North Beach area of San Francisco, also known as Little Italy, California Fish Market Restaurant serves seafood with an Italian spin in a bright and friendly environment.

The owner of Pasta Pop-Up closed the restaurant during the pandemic to relaunch the space as California Fish Market Restaurant.

California Fish Market Restaurant features sustainable seafood that has been farmed or wild-caught in a way that best serves the environment.

The menu features several elevated seafood pasta dishes, including risotto with prawns, squid, clams and mussels; lobster ravioli; smoked salmon pappardelle; and more.

They also serve San Francisco’s signature dish, cioppino, featuring a tomato-based seafood stew with mussels, clams, scallops, crab calamari, and shrimp.

Dungeness crab; grilled King Salmon; scallops; fish and chips are so forth are among the entrees.

Guests can eat outside on the street-side patio, in the alleyway patio surrounded by colorful murals, or in the upscale interior featuring a bar area, fun lighting, white hues, and wooden materials.

California Fish Market’s happy hour offers a small tasting menu where guests can choose a wine and a small plate (like oysters or squid & prawns). This is an excellent option if you want to sample a few different menu items for a low price.

On our trip to San Francisco, we most definitely wanted to try out some cioppino in North Beach. Most online guides recommended their neighbor Sotto Marre as a go-to place for cioppino. I had read that Sotto Marre didn’t take reservations but it turns out that they do for tables of 4. Anyhow, when I got to Sotto Mare, they didn’t have table for 4 within a reasonable time frame so we decided to try out California Fish Market Restaurant, which turned out great.

The server at California Fish Market Restaurant tells me that their restaurant is more for locals while Sotto Marre is more for tourists

We ordered the grilled calamari, the uni bucatini, a deep-fried red snapper and of course, a cioppino.

The grilled calamari was perfectly tender.

The sea urchin pasta was al dente but unfortunately the uni melted onto the hot pasta so the dish didn’t look as good as it could be.

The deep-fried red snapper had a crispy skin on the outside and a tender, nicely cooked meat.

The cioppino had a hearty, flavourful tomato stew with fresh seafood.

Service was excellent and we enjoyed talking to our server. We dined in the parklet with heaters on to keep us warm on during that windy evening. Our meal came out to be about $175 including tax and tip for four dishes.

Overall, a great experience at California Fish Market Restaurant and I would recommend it.

550 Green St, San Francisco, CA
www.cafishmarketrestaurant.com