SFReview
photo credit: Krescent Cassaro
Little Gem
This spot is Permanently Closed.
Included In
Little Gem has a lot going for it. Perfect corner in Hayes Valley, chefs from Thomas Keller establishments, a sleek interior that feels like a fancy museum cafe, and a promise of healthy, aggressively organic food that you actually want to eat. Cue San Francisco freaking the f*ck out.
What’s not going for it? Consistency in its ability to make things lacking joyful ingredients (gluten, sugar) taste good. Choose wisely, and you will be advocating this as a new cleanse plan. Order the wrong thing, and you will be looking at Monsanto stock and investing in wheat.
As noted above, the food at Little Gem is premised on being preposterously clean and healthy, and also upscale and delicious. The first two of those ideals are always true. The latter depends very much on what you get. Some salads are strong, while others make us completely distrust the entire belief that humans should eat leaves. Breakfast is also a game of chance, with the odds stacked against you because portion sizes are generally minute. The steak wrap is the best thing on the menu, but that isn’t exactly impressive since you don’t need sugar to make steak taste good. In order to leave Little Gem happy, you will need to be judicious in your choices.
photo credit: Krescent Cassaro
Despite the hit-or-miss menu, Little Gem is an amazingly pleasant place to eat. The people who work there are chatty and seemingly happy to be spending all day in such a lovely place. The décor is straight out of Architectural Digest, and you generally feel calm here. Maybe it’s the bamboo grove you can see from the back room, or how all the diners speak in hushed tones, or because nobody is hyped up on glucose. Whatever the reason, it makes you feel like your entire wardrobe should be made of organic, hand-harvested cashmere and you should spend much of your day in a tasteful and pure space like Little Gem.
So we encourage you to hit Little Gem for healthy food, provided that you order correctly (more on that below) and don’t expect mountains of food. Once you’re there, you’ll end up wanting to post up for a while and imagine a life of attending Davos or hosting a mindfulness seminar. Dream big.