Editorial
The best bars nob hill san francisco has to offer are not the ones that come up first in a search. Nob Hill and Russian Hill are both neighbourhoods that reward the kind of drinking you do when you are not in a hurry — classic hotel bars with cathedral-ceiling rooms, quiet streets with cocktail bars that have been doing the same thing excellently for twenty years, and a handful of hidden spots that most visitors never find. We have been through both hills enough times to know which bars earn the cable car ride up.
Nob Hill is San Francisco's hotel hill — the legacy properties up here maintain bars that have been serving the city's most serious drinkers for decades. These are rooms with history, and they wear it without effort.
Beyond the hotel bars, Nob Hill and Russian Hill have a collection of independent cocktail bars that operate at a level most visitors do not expect from these residential neighbourhoods. These are the rooms that the city's own bartenders go to on their nights off.
Russian Hill's bar scene is smaller and quieter than its Nob Hill neighbour, but the best spots here have a character that the grander hotel bars cannot replicate. These are the bars worth finding on foot, walking the steep blocks above Columbus Avenue.
These two hills are San Francisco's most underrated drinking neighbourhood. The visitors go to the Mission, Hayes Valley, and the Tenderloin for cocktail bars — and those are all worthy destinations. But the combination of the best hotel bars in the city, the sherry program at Zarzuela, the Tonga Room, and the quiet intimacy of Verbena and Amelie makes Nob Hill and Russian Hill the right answer for an evening that prioritises quality over discovery.
We recommend the following evening circuit: cocktail at the Big 4, elevator to the Top of the Mark for the view at dusk, then down the hill on foot to Zarzuela for sherry and croquetas, finishing at Verbena for the bartender's seasonal special. Book a table at Zarzuela in advance — the bar seats fill by 7pm on most nights.
Marcus has been covering the West Coast bar scene for twelve years. He lived in Nob Hill for three of them and considers the Big 4 bar the finest room in San Francisco that most people have never visited.