If you were to imagine San Francisco’s most Yelped restaurant, you might think of a bustling Union Square outpost of a global chain like the Cheesecake Factory. Or perhaps, if you were less cynical, you might think of something affordable and inextricably linked to SF, like a burrito joint. Either way, you’d be wrong.
The city’s most popular restaurant — using its more than 13,000 Yelp reviews, more than any other restaurant in the entire Bay Area, as a gauge — is located in Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s not part of a corporate chain run by a faceless CEO. Rather, its stewards are third-generation San Franciscans whose grandfather built Pier 39 in 1978. It’s been around for about 20 years, a blip in time compared with other restaurants in that neighborhood, yet it serves memorable clam chowder and crab risotto all the same.
But what really stands out about the Fog Harbor Fish House is the view. There simply isn’t a bad table in the house. No matter where you’re sitting in this cavernous Pier 39 restaurant, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island and the bay are yours to take in.
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The Fog Harbor Fish House has views of the bay and Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, shown on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
The Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
A view of the Fog Harbor Fish House at Pier 39 in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
The family’s company, Simco Restaurants, operates Fog Harbor and five others on the pier: Wipeout Bar and Grill, Pier Market Seafood Restaurant, Eagle Cafe, Crab House and Biscoff Coffee Corner. Together, they see a million guests annually, with Fog Harbor Fish House accounting for 400,000 of them, according to Simco CEO Ryan Simmons, who took over after his father, Scooter Simmons, retired a few years ago. Surprisingly, they’re not all out-of-towners. According to Ryan, a little more than half of Fog Harbor diners live in the Bay Area’s nine counties.
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The dining room is busy on a Thursday afternoon at the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
“You would be shocked at how many repeat guests we have,” Ryan told SFGATE, referring to locals who come five to seven times a year, usually with a guest in town. “One of the challenges that we deal with is the perception that we’re a tourist trap restaurant, but we care so much about the quality of the product and the service and experience that we deliver.”
That might be why the majority of those Yelp reviews — a staggering count exceeding 11,000 — give the restaurant four and five stars. Simco Chief Operating Officer Bob Partrite, who has been with the company for 31 years, stresses consistency in everything they do, from greeting customers and providing table service to how food looks on the plate.
Clockwise from left: Garlic-roasted whole Dungeness crab, Caesar salad and house-made desserts from the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
Top to bottom: Garlic-roasted whole Dungeness crab, Caesar salad and house-made desserts from the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
“When I go to a restaurant, I tend to order the same stinkin’ thing, and I want it to be the same every time I go,” said Partrite, who trained at the California Culinary Academy and started his Simco journey as the chef at the Pier Market Seafood Restaurant in 1995.
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He reads and responds to every Yelp review, calling the platform his “baby” for the past 15 years.
“I knew we were neck and neck with Brenda’s for some time,” Partrite said, referring to the No. 2 most Yelped restaurant in the Bay Area. “Anything that’s in there, a service-related issue or a dish, I cut it and paste it and send it to the management team. We’ll go back and try to diagnose exactly what happened.”
Ryan and his sister Nicki Asonye, Simco’s vice president of marketing and finance, grew up in the business. They have known many of the longtime Pier 39 business operators — and employees like Partrite — their entire lives. Both started working in the restaurants when they turned 13. Ryan’s earliest jobs were wiping down tables and chasing away pigeons. Nicki started out filing papers in the office, then graduated to hostess.
FILE: Scooter and Ryan Simmons at Pier 39 in San Francisco.
Courtesy of Nicki Asonye
FILE: Simco Restaurants’ director of marketing Nicki Asonye, right, with her grandfather Warren Simmons, who developed Pier 39 in San Francisco.
Courtesy of Nicki Asonye
Both worked their way up. Now, the siblings are in their 40s and have children of their own. Ryan’s 7-year-old has a serious Dungeness crab habit; Nicki’s kids can’t visit their mom without riding the carousel or saying hi to the sea lions.
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Quintessential SF seafood
In addition to its stellar views, Fog Harbor is known for its early adoption of sustainability. According to Partrite, the restaurants combined purchase approximately 100 tons of seafood a year, so it behooved them early on to figure out a way to source that protects the environment.
“Everything on the menu is a yellow list or green list item,” Partrite said, referring to the traffic-light color system designed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. They buy petrale sole, rock cod, clams, scallops, oysters and mussels from A. LaRocca Seafood on Pier 45. The crab comes from TwoXSea, also on the pier.
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On a recent Thursday, my colleague and I stopped in for lunch, eager to try the Bay Area’s most reviewed restaurant and take advantage of the fogless late September weather. We tucked into a table by the large windows overlooking the 150-foot-tall SkyStar Wheel. Just on the other side of the glass, tugboats made their way into narrow slips while, in the distance, a gaggle of sailboats appeared to be racing across the bay. By 1 p.m., there were only a few empty tables in the restaurant.
A server attends to diners at the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
“This is actually slow for us,” our server Carlos Silva shared when he approached our table.
Silva, who is in his 10th year with Fog Harbor, had the kind of vibe I appreciate among waitstaff: knowledgeable and unrushed, with the right amount of confidence. He told us that he’s tasted all the cioppino in the area and vowed that theirs is the best in the city, tied only with Sotto Mare. So, of course, we ordered it along with some other recommendations, including the swordfish, a cup of chowder and the dish they sell more of than anything — scallop and crab risotto.
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I’m not going to say Fog Harbor’s clam chowder ($9.50, cup; $11.50, bowl) is the best because I’m not an avid or regular consumer of chowder. I often avoid it for fear of a pasty, unappetizing texture. But I was surprised at just how smooth and creamy this chowder was — the result of a gluten-free roux, I learned.
“We use rice flour,” Partrite told me later. “We started playing around with it a few years ago because so many people were requesting gluten-free chowder. And it works.” This one, served appropriately hot with toothsome clam and perfectly cooked potato, was just right.
Cioppino at the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
The cioppino ($42), by contrast, was a bit thin for me. However, the generous amount of seafood in this dish — from the large mound of fresh crab to the baby scallops, clams, mussels, white fish and plucky shrimp — made up for it. A bargain for sharing, in my opinion.
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The favorite of the table, however, was the risotto ($41). The toothsome short-grain rice dish arrived in a shallow pool of beurre blanc, so don’t order it if you like a drier risotto. There is a lot of crab hidden inside the rice, which is dotted with basil pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes for acidity and served with four jumbo scallops that were prepared by someone with a Ph.D. in searing. They were perfect.
If you’re looking for something lighter, order the grilled swordfish ($37). Swordfish is risky; when overcooked, it quickly becomes tough and rubbery. But this one came out flaky and delicious over a bed of roasted peppers, red onions, zucchini and fingerling potatoes with chimichurri sauce and pesto aioli.
Swordfish topped with pesto aioli at the Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
Long before Yelp
Before it was Fog Harbor Fish House, the space was home to Chic’s Place Seafood Grill and Bar, a longtime Pier 39 fixture known for casual dining. In 2001, Simco Restaurants purchased the restaurant and continued operating it as Chic’s until they decided the only way to achieve the “quintessential SF waterfront restaurant” they envisioned was to renovate the interior, removing the grand columns and expanding the dining room. Fog Harbor Fish House had its first day of business in 2007.
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“We opened up the entrance, made big windows and really catered it toward that view,” Ryan said.
The Fog Harbor Fish House has views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, shown on Sept. 17, 2026.
Lizzy Myers/SFGATE
It was something that their charismatic grandfather, Warren Simmons, stressed: Fisherman’s Wharf was a singular place meant to be shared. Warren grew up in San Francisco, peddling newspapers at the age of 9. He worked as a Pan American pilot from 1950 to 1970 and founded the Mexican restaurant chain Chevys with his son, Scooter, and daughter-in-law, Nancy, in 1986. They sold it in 1993.
But he will likely be remembered most for his tenacity in building Pier 39, which he spent five years developing into a thriving shopping and restaurant district. It opened Oct. 4, 1978, on schedule — a feat for any developer.
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“He was a push-all-the-chips-into-the-middle-of-the-table kind of guy, and you can see it with Pier 39, he was not going to be denied,” Ryan said of “Gramps.” “He had a bet with Dianne Feinstein that if he pulled it off in time, she would show up in a bikini.” And she did (though it was actually a more modest bathing suit).
FILE: Warren Simmons, left, and Diane Feinstein on the opening day of Pier 39 in San Francisco in 1978.
Courtesy of Nicki Asonye
The iconic photo of Feinstein, who at the time was the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, hangs in the restaurant. She was sworn in as the mayor of San Francisco in December later that year.
Ryan and Nicki never had the pleasure of working with their grandfather, but Partrite did.
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“He was a great man to work for — meticulous, and a true visionary,” he said. “Expectations were always high, but that’s exactly what made you better. He was the kind of leader you don’t forget.”
Fog Harbor Fish House, Pier 39, San Francisco. Open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
Dining and Cooking