Genuine surprises don’t happen that often - maybe once in a lifetime, you get upgraded to first class. Or that one couple you thought would last as long as a neglected houseplant ends up sending you a wedding invite. But Rich Table is a restaurant in Hayes Valley that somehow manages to surprise us every time we eat here.

At first glance, the place looks like any other neighborhood spot, and the food doesn’t sound super exciting. In fact, there are similar rotating menus at places across San Francisco: individual small bites, some appetizers, a few creative pastas, and mains - and even the individual dishes don’t sound particularly revolutionary. But at Rich Table, what you read and what ends up on a plate in front of you is like someone telling you about their new Jaguar before opening the garage to show you a large jungle cat.

Even if you comb the menu word for word four times, almost none of the dishes come out looking or tasting anything like you imagined, but in the best way possible. There are perfectly salty and not too fishy sardine chips that have fish fillets actually weaved into each individual potato slice, spicy hamachi poke that comes with rice and nori to make your own individual handrolls, and a dry-aged steak that arrives to have bisque dumped overtop, and all of it is fantastic. It’s the kind of food you’ll want to order again for someone else, just to watch them get as weirdly excited as you did when you had it.

If it’s your first time here, the $99 Chef Picks tasting menu is the way to go - it’s the best value of any tasting menu in San Francisco. You get pretty much every single bite, along with one appetizer, pasta, fish, and a meat, plus dessert. But if you’re just here for a second date or a casual catch up with a friend you haven’t seen in forever, you could just as easily sit at the bar and split a few things over some wine and leave happy. That’s because pretty much any dish you order is good enough for it to be the only thing you get, down to the dense and slightly bitter douglas fir bread with incredible butter that you should definitely start with if nothing else.

Rich Table feels more like somewhere you’d go for brunch, or the neighborhood spot you rely on when all of your pots and pans feel like they weigh 800 lbs., rather than somewhere you need to make a reservation for a month out. But you should, because once you sit down and the servers start bringing food out, you’ll realize that Rich Table is something else entirely. It’s one of the rare places that’s only gotten better over the years and it’s one of the best restaurants in San Francisco.