Lazy Bear

"Yes, Lazy Bear holds two Michelin stars but set aside any expectations of stuffy service and starched white tablecloths. The restaurant describes itself as a “modern dinner party” and while the original communal table has been chopped up and spread out around the dining room, an abundance of staff circulating the floor and an open kitchen make the dining experience both exceptionally professional, a little chaotic, and endlessly fun. By now several of the dishes on the ever-changing menu are staples — for example, the delicate but smoky whipped scrambled egg — but part of the fun is seeing what local and in-season ingredients the team has sourced or foraged for your visit. If you can, go all-in on one of the beverage pairings and a liquid treat for after dinner." - Dianne de Guzman, Eater Staff

"A ticket to dinner at this recently renovated Mission District destination will set you back about $300 with the option to upgrade to an experience that includes dessert and an after-dinner drink for an additional few hundred bucks. But if you’re looking for a fine dining restaurant that’s not too stuffy, this is your spot. Though Lazy Bear no longer hosts diners at a single communal table to channel that extravagant dinner party vibe, this is still a high-energy dining room where staff circle throughout the cabin-like space, and the open kitchen allows for a full view of the team at work. In general, the food leans more rustic than fussy — think, airy whipped scrambled eggs infused with smoky bacon fat and a bone-in lamb chop that no one will judge you for picking up and eating with your hands." - Flora Tsapovsky, Eater Staff

"Two-Michelin-starred Lazy Bear built its reputation on being a fine-dining dinner party. The lore has been oft-told: Chef David Barzelay began running underground dinner parties out of his apartment, then later, a warehouse when they outgrew his home. By the time those parties developed into a full-blown, “legit” space at 3416 19th Street in the Mission, Barzelay continued with the format. It made sense to maintain the style that grew the Lazy Bear brand, but eventually, things needed to evolve. On the occasion of the restaurant’s 10th anniversary this year, Barzelay and managing partner Colleen Booth pushed through a nearly two-month renovation of the Lazy Bear space that began at the start of August, updating the kitchen, dining room, and mezzanine to both fit their team and keep the high-caliber guest experience. “A lot of the changes are very much things noticeable to guests directly,” Barzelay says, “but a lot of the updates are also things that more affect the staff, in ways that allow us to do more or better or more efficient stuff for our guests.” Lazy Bear has always leaned into the name of the restaurant by creating a space that evokes foresty touches, including kitschy-fun Smokey Bear signage and faux animal trophy heads. And while it retains many of those touches that helped curb any stuffy fine dining feel, the update leans into those early forest themes. The entryway includes massive sheets of exposed rock, mimicking the opening to a bear cave, before giving way to the cavernous heights of the dining room. The upstairs mezzanine was given a more wood-wrapped update emphasizing the cabin vibe. The bathrooms offer some moments of softness against the harsh rock cave and cabin feel, more akin to a meadow, says Booth. “I think it’s just one of those more romanticized, aesthetic ways of pulling the whole story together that I think, before, we didn’t fully connect the dots [of this theme].” Lazy Bear’s upgrade is a mix of changes that will and won’t be (initially) perceived by diners, but it’s an elegant, grown version of what’s come before it. One of the biggest changes was dropping the dining room-length tables that contributed to the dinner party atmosphere. It was a change first precipitated by the pandemic, informed by the necessity of social distancing upon Lazy Bear’s return in 2021, but now the restaurant is fully leaning into it. For this update, Barzelay buzzed those long tables into smaller sizes for the dining room — a commitment to leaving those dinner party days behind (for now) to chase better service and hospitality that can only happen with more space. Plate and sauce presentation, or, say the restaurant’s new tableside butter service can happen with more ease, versus the previous dance of having to navigate around those long, long tables. “We had been thinking of moving away from the communal format for a couple of years before the pandemic,” Barzelay says. “All of the constraints on us at that point — the space, the timing, the number of people — we felt like we were doing about as well as we could within [that setup] and we just wanted a little more room to grow.” Noticeably, a banquette is installed along the wall of the restaurant with those aforementioned shortened tables, adding a luxe touch alongside new goldenrod-hued mohair chairs. Barzelay and Booth also took another pandemic lesson and made it permanent: For a time, the restaurant sat diners at tables on the second-level mezzanine, with only half of the space able to fully appreciate overhead views of the dining room and kitchen. Now those balcony-side tables are back, giving some lucky diners a chance to watch the restaurant action from above. The other half of the mezzanine remains anchored by the large leather couch, where diners will continue to have their post-meal desserts and drinks. But the imperceptible alterations diners will benefit from, are upgrades to the kitchen and systems of how the Lazy Bear team works together. The pastry team, for instance, was relegated to plating downstairs during the pandemic, but now they are in the main kitchen again, thanks to the updates. The new service stations offer subtle touches that increase efficiency and convenience, such as an integrated, custom wine bucket, new wine fridges, and a new sparkling water system. The restaurant updated its Santa Maria-style grill to a new one by Grills by Demant, which includes a live firebox and expands how the team grills and cooks, Barzelay says. The kitchen staff can cook over the open flame, of course, but they can also now cook over coals, bury ingredients into the coals for a different technique, or smoke items over the grill slowly for days. It’s the culmination of lessons learned in the restaurant’s decade in business, a commitment to always improving, but also retaining the best parts of itself. “We weren’t really trying to change the vibe,” Barzelay says. “I just wanted to upgrade the experience in a lot of different ways. We wanted to make it more refined, more luxurious, but still express the sense of fun that I think we bring to dining experiences.” Lazy Bear (3416 19th Street) is open from 4:45 p.m. to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, by reservation only, with tickets for December available now via Tock. The restaurant also has upcoming special events, such as its holiday wine dinners on Friday, December 20, and Saturday, December 21, and a special New Year’s Eve event." - Dianne de Guzman

"Lazy Bear is a fine dining restaurant that’s the opposite of stuffy. The vintage camping theme keeps things loose from the moment you sit down and flip through a menu designed to look like a field guide, tiny pencil and all. Rustic floral arrangements, camping decor, and a portrait of Nick Offerman wearing flannel are the backdrop to your 11-course meal. But it’s not all about the schtick. The out-of-the-box dishes, from tequila-spiked oysters to whipped scrambled eggs served in an actual eggshell, are pulled off with style. So when you’re in the market for an extra special night (or even better, when someone else is paying), get here. " - julia chen 1, lani conway, ricky rodriguez

"Eating the lamb chops at Lazy Bear is a kind of meaty, crispy, fatty divinity. For those who enjoy sinking teeth into lamb — itself a prized protein in the fine dining realm — there might be no better way to enjoy succulent chops than at the two-Michelin-starred Mission District outfit. And you can thank your dad’s bold and brassy grilling for the inspiration. When he put the dish on the menu about a decade ago, chef David Barzelay drew inspiration from his dad’s grilling. In doing so, he offered a counterpoint to the preciousness with which other fine dining restaurants handled meat, pushing the amount of sear and char as far as he could. That first spring in the 19th Street space, Lazy Bear’s team debuted the dish. It was an instant hit: two chops, expertly seared to fine chew and tear. “I have the opinion that most fine dining doesn’t do a la minute cooking,” Barzelay says. “I would say diners weren’t excited about it until they ate it. Now we hear every night that it’s the best lamb they’ve ever had.” The meat comes from a co-op of Northern California farms, with Preferred Meats supplying larger racks of lamb than what’s typical to order, before what Barzelay calls the “mutton stage,” when a lamb’s gamey flavor is more pronounced. Cooking such big hunks of meat allows the dish’s signature flavor to develop on the exterior and char to that quintessential backyard barbecue flavor, without risking overcooking the interior. The goal is a perfect medium-cooked chop with a nice finishing sear from the range. When the racks first arrive at the restaurant, the team pulls off the exterior layer of fat but leaves the smaller fat cap, that layer of meat just outside the eye of the rib. In the restaurant’s current non-communal, staggered seating format (as opposed to the restaurant’s initial dinner party, group format) the lamb racks are then seared in saute pans. This allows the team to press the racks down, quickly searing them until the fat oozes and the lamb browns and crisps without charring. Ten minutes later the fat and exterior are charred, while the inside remains raw. The team cools the meat down, then vacuum-seals it in a marinade of fish sauce, sugar, garlic, and a little mustard, inspired by Pok Pok’s chicken wing marinade. “It adds umami, and sugars caramelize it,” Barzelay says. All this precision allows for a more delicate flavor in the fat and marbling in the meat, he says. After marinating for at least four hours, the chops are sous vide until just under final temperature. The meat comes out of its sous vide bath to rest a few courses, before returning to the grill for that final firing and lacquering with barbecue sauce. But some lucky diners get a Lazy Bear bonus: enter the “dad chop,” a darker, smaller chop that arrives as a little gift part-way through the lamb course. This is no “dainty fine dining sear,” that you would get at other restaurants, as Barzelay puts it. The gifted chop is typically the first and last chop of the rack, which get cooked a bit more since they are on the ends. Those “burnt ends” go back on the grill to char and receive a lacquer on both sides; the inside becomes medium well while the exterior fat gets crispy. He says some 40 percent of guests receive the surprise. Solo diners, enthusiastic guests, those who’ve eaten at the restaurant more than five times — these are just a few of the factors that might prompt Lazy Bear’s kitchen to bestow the hallowed bonus meat. The custom started during the communal dining pre-pandemic days as a way to utilize the exterior chops (interior chops went to guests), which were a bit well-done from all the time spent on the grill. Originally staff ate those chops, but the team soon realized that the meat was rad enough to send out as surprises here and there. “That was our favorite kitchen snack,” Barzelay says. “We threw them back on the grill and let ‘em rip, forget about a perfect medium.” Getting the dish on the menu in the first place, too, came from a brazen attitude in the restaurant. Barzelay was in search of what he calls a “deep char,” barbecue-style. During the pandemic, the kitchen switched to mesquite charcoal from Central California red oak to impart even more of that sensibility to the meat’s finish. Binchotan, for instance, he contends burns too cleanly — nothing like his dad used to make on a Weber. “[Our chops taste like] your dad grilling over way too big a flame in the backyard,” Barzelay says. “Because that’s nostalgic for us. I want to taste the charcoal just a little bit.” There’s nothing he wants to change with the lamb chop, nothing he can’t iterate upon by shaking up the stone fruits each season. The dish has changed over the years — sometimes the barbecue sauce is made with black date and garlic, sometimes smoked cherry and locally foraged conifer pine needles — but the processing of the lamb remains. “We put a ton of technique into our food,” he says, “but I’d say we actively try to be delicious and fun and unpretentious and not precious.” Lazy Bear (3416 19th Street) is temporarily closed for renovations as of August 2024 and returns in September. Reservations are available via Tock." - Paolo Bicchieri