San Francisco Chronical Review – S.F.’s Best Seafood
LINK TO THE ARTICLE
By Cesar Hernandez, Associate Restaurant Critic
July 16, 2025
La Mar convinced me that restaurants on San Francisco’s Embarcadero should never be counted out as merely for tourists. For nearly 17 years, the Peru-born restaurant has been a beacon for masterfully prepared seafood and knockout views.
It’s the Bay Area’s preeminent exhibition of Peruvian cooking, akin to a Spielberg blockbuster: grandiose, beautiful and deliciously entertaining. Founder and celebrity chef Gastón Acurio has 10 La Mar locations, a fraction of his global empire of over 40 restaurants. But the story of La Mar in San Francisco has much to do with Victoriano Lopez, the executive chef for the last decade who has worked with Acurio for 30 years.
La Mar was ahead of the curve, raising the bar for Peruvian food in the Bay Area. And I’d argue its cebiches paved the way for the rise of raw seafood dishes like crudos, which are all but mandatory on menus today. Lopez says the restaurant struggled for years to sweet-talk diners into consuming uncooked fish, marinated moments before hitting the table. But La Mar succeeded, as now it’s the restaurant’s biggest seller.
The menu can feel long-winded, but the general wisdom is that sea triumphs over land and the best cocktails are made with pisco.
Start with a cebiche like the classic ($31), halibut (or the catch of the day) that gracefully balances acidity, savoriness and mild heat with crunch. Leche de tigre — a blend of celery, lime juice and habanero — serves as the base for all other cebiches. Add a bit of aji amarillo to the mix and it becomes the spicier, tangier Criollazo ($36). The sleeper hit is a Lopez original: the Victoriano ($31), his take on an Italian crudo, which adds sunchokes and olive oil to the marinade, making it a creamy emulsion.
Another worthy Italian-inflected dish is the velvety seafood bucatini ($49), an aquatic symposium of scallops, octopus and crab in a creamy sauce that riffs on a Peruvian soup called chupe. The dishes that blend two cultures can otherwise be hit-or-miss, as with the lackluster Chaufa Aeropuerto ($50). The overpriced Wagyu beef fried rice arrives in a stone pot, whose purpose is mostly decorative.
You’re better off ordering the lomo saltado ($46): melty, smoky tenderloin steak tumbled into a blazing wok with tomatoes, oyster sauce, vinegar and craggy home fries. The latter component makes all the difference, as most local preparations of the dish opt for frozen potatoes. You can save some money if you choose it as your entree in the daytime executive lunch deal ($49), which includes a dessert and an appetizer, such as the classic cebiche or the savory, cold potato casserole known as causa.
The restaurant never uses frozen seafood, so some dishes are only available for a limited time, like the recent flavor-packed baby squid dish ($34), flame-grilled mollusks varnished with an aji panca chile paste that tastes similar to birria adobo.
Before leading the Embarcadero restaurant, Lopez described himself as Acurio’s right-hand man. Like the Wolf from “Pulp Fiction,” he was a fixer of sorts for the celebrity chef, joining Acurio’s fold in 1995 as a line cook at Astrid & Gaston — ranked No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2013. Lopez worked at Acurio’s restaurants across the globe before coming on as executive chef at the San Francisco La Mar in 2015.
This was a period of financial struggle; he audited the restaurant and found that cost-cutting measures made food quality suffer. He brought the restaurant back to its high caliber, sparing no expense for sourcing ingredients. “We’re not in the business of deceiving people,” said Lopez. “If we say it’s live scallops, then it’s live scallops.”
After the detrimental effects of the pandemic, La Mar attempted something new: In 2023, it remodeled the bar area, unrolled new bites and gave it a separate identity. But La Mar Bar was short-lived. “It didn’t work,” said Lopez. “Patrons preferred the regular menu.” The people want the whole La Mar experience.
Last year, La Mar scrapped those menu items and underwent a light renovation, bringing the refreshed lounge into the rest of the 11,000-square-foot restaurant. It’s a stunner. Under the zinc-plated bar are cool-toned fish scale tiles, and at the far end is a giant, light-up squid installation against a backdrop of billowing wallpaper. The facelift makes the area the sleekest seat in the house, unless the sun is out illuminating the gorgeous back patio. Sitting outdoors, taking stock of the rippling bay, nursing a pisco sour, I can’t help but feel romantic about the city’s historic piers.
Despite the Embarcadero’s recent influx of worthy new dining options, La Mar has proven its staying power. It’s not a restaurant that most can visit casually, but when the occasion arises, it delivers.
The tourists are on to something.
