Pier 23 Cafe sits right on the water on San Francisco's Embarcadero, a waterfront restaurant and bar that has served the same stretch of pier for decades. The draw is the combination the address makes possible: a Bay-front patio, a seafood kitchen and live music most nights of the week.
The room is a survivor of the old working waterfront, family-owned and unpolished in a way the rebuilt Embarcadero around it is not. SF Station files it as a restaurant, bar and live-music venue at once, which is the right description; few rooms in the city try to be all three on a patio over the Bay.
What to order is seafood with a view, paired with a drink from the bar. The kitchen leans into fresh fish and waterfront classics, and the bar pours the cocktails and beer that a long afternoon on the patio calls for. The food is the supporting act on a music night and the headline at a weekend lunch, and the menu carries both visits.
The music is the signature. Per the venue, Pier 23 books live bands several nights a week across salsa, jazz, R&B and reggae, and the floor turns into a dance room when the band hits its stride. There is a back patio on the Bay to cool off when the indoor floor heats up, a layout built for a crowd that wants to dance and then step outside to the water.
The setting does a lot of the work. The patio looks straight out at the Bay, the sidewalk tables catch the Embarcadero foot traffic, and the indoor room keeps the bar and the band. Yelp logs close to two thousand reviews, with the waterfront seat and the live music the two things drinkers return to.
The best time to go is a clear afternoon that runs into a music night, when the patio carries the daylight hours and the band picks up after dark. Weekend mornings open at 10am for a slower waterfront brunch before the crowd arrives.
The room is a holdover from an older Embarcadero. The waterfront around it was rebuilt after the Embarcadero Freeway came down, trading working piers for a landscaped promenade, and Pier 23 is one of the few rooms on the strip that still reads as part of the old port rather than the new one. The family ownership and the unpolished wooden room are most of why it has kept that character.
The live-music calendar is the engine. Booking bands several nights a week across salsa, jazz, R&B and reggae gives the room a reason to fill that does not depend on the weather, and the dance floor turns a dinner crowd into a late one. The back patio on the Bay is the pressure valve, the place to step out when the indoor floor heats up.
The crowd skews to a younger Embarcadero mix on music nights and a broader visitor-and-local crowd by day, drawn by the water as much as the room. For more of the city, see the best bars in San Francisco and the global live music pillar, or pair it with the historic Vesuvio Cafe in North Beach for an older San Francisco room.
The appeal is a true waterfront bar with a dance floor, one of the last places on the Embarcadero that still feels like the working pier it sits on.
