There are an estimated 4,000 restaurants in San Francisco collectively serving up tens of thousands of dishes. For Gazetteer SF, food enthusiast and man-about-town Omar Mamoon is recommending the best ones. This is Order Up.
George Dingle opened his modern British gastropub Dingles Public House with his life and business partner Anissa last November at 333 Fulton St. in the former location of Pläj in Hayes Valley.
Born in Bath and raised in Gloucester, Dingle cooked at fine dining restaurants in London and throughout Europe for most of his career. He first came to San Francisco in 2015 to work at Corey Lee’s Benu, then headed the kitchen at its sister restaurant Monsieur Benjamin until its closing in 2023.
“I cooked in so many Michelin kitchens,” Dingle told me. “I wanted to learn from the best and apply that to something more casual”
For his own spot, he had a simple plan: “We’re just trying to do things that are classic British dishes but to the best of our ability.”
That means cooking up things like buttery, flakey pies and mash boosted with bone marrow; juicy sausage rolls with brown sauce made in house; and a Sunday roast of rare beef accompanied with crispy roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, gravy boat, and all.
It’s the kind of rib-sticking meal you’d savor in London, but you don’t even need to leave San Francisco to enjoy.
My recommendation is to start your meal with a Scotch Egg, the classic deep-fried sausage-wrapped hard-boiled egg snack which confusingly is not from Scotland and might even have Indian origins dating back to when British soldiers brought the dish home from their colonial misadventures.
For his Scotch egg, Dingle makes the sausage in house, grinding pork shoulder and bacon together and seasoning the mix with paprika, mace, garlic, thyme, and rosemary.
He then steams eggs for exactly seven minutes before shocking them in an ice bath to prevent overcooking. This also keeps the yolks nice and runny.
The eggs are then peeled, wrapped in sausage meat, breaded in panko, then deep fried until golden brown and crispy. They’re finished in the oven so the meat cooks through properly. Served split in half with a finish of flakey smoked Maldon sea salt, the eggs are plated over an aioli fortified with two types of mustards: whole grain, and (naturally) English.
Dingle sells 40 of the Scotch eggs per day. I think they pair well with Guinness, which Dingle has on draught, poured with a creamy layer of head that sticks to your lips after a sip.
The other classic I really love at Dingles are the fish and chips, made from whole ling cod that Dingle quickly brines before butchering into filets. The cuts are then coated in a beer batter (that happens to be gluten free) before being fried until golden brown and delicious.
It’s his chips that get me, though: they’re thrice cooked, creamy on the inside, and shatteringly crispy on the outside.
Dingle sources premium chipperbeck potatoes, peels, handcuts, and soaks them in water overnight to remove the starch and maintain their color. Then they’re steamed, tossed together to get craggy edges, and chilled down. They’re blanched to cook through, chilled down again, then deep-fried at a higher temperature to order and served with house made tartare and curry sauce.
In other words, they’re proper.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” Dingle says. And, really, when something is this good, you don’t need to.
