Brazen Head Is San Francisco’s Most Delightful Late-Night Secret

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

One of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets is an unmarked Irish pub that serves French food until midnight — a dimly lit time capsule of a restaurant hidden away on a windswept corner of the Marina.

But maybe you already knew that.

In fact, what I love about Brazen Head — the Cow Hollow pub in question — is how the place is full of seeming contradictions. Start with how the restaurant still feels like a well-kept secret, unknown to wide swaths of San Franciscans — despite being, at the same time, a beloved local institution. Since we started this column, no other late-night spot in San Francisco has been recommended to us more frequently or with greater enthusiasm, in some cases by readers who’ve been frequenting the place since it first opened in the early ’80s. It’s your favorite chef’s favorite restaurant — an IYKYK haunt for local food and beverage industry types.

And it really is popular. Even at 10 o’clock on a random Monday night, both the bar counter and dining room were almost fully packed, the whole place busy and buzzing with conversation.

But it’s also true that no one we knew personally had ever heard of Brazen Head, let alone eaten there. And the place is easy to miss, even if you’re already in the area. There’s no signage to speak of, other than a chalkboard specials sign posted on the sidewalk out front and a “B” and “H” on the old-timey stained-glass door panes. Pro tip: Look for the blue awning across the street from the Motel Capri.

Inside, Brazen Head’s aesthetics are those of an Irish pub even more ancient than its 40-plus years: wood paneling, thick velvet curtains and portraits of men in wigs reminiscent of the Elizabethan era. Dim orange lights suffuse the room with an eerie, Halloween-esque glow. The vibe is excellent — even if I’m convinced no human has ever taken a food photo here that doesn’t look like it was shot in infrared.

The menu, too, feels like a delightful time warp. It’s about evenly split between French bistro, Italian American and “classic American,” by which I mean the kind of old-school food that used to be ubiquitous at hotel restaurants in the 1980s — or the 1950s, even. When was the last time you saw escargots on the menu at a casual restaurant? Not some newfangled version topped with foam or microgreens, but the classic French style, in deep pools of hot, garlicky melted butter that you sop up with toasted sourdough.

Or when was the last time you had beef Stroganoff, or even thought about the dish’s existence? (I’d probably have to go all the way back to my college struggle meals of Hamburger Helper.) Brazen Head’s version, a special on the night of our visit, featured tender chunks of filet mignon and fresh, handmade pappardelle, all tossed in a tangy sour cream sauce — a combination that was so wonderfully cozy and nostalgic, we couldn’t stop eating it.

French onion soup might seem like a perfunctory dish to put on a pub menu, but Brazen Head’s tastes like it was made with love — rich and melty, with a full-flavored broth that warmed us up from the inside. And even though most tables had ordered hefty prime rib plates (probably the restaurant’s most popular dish), we decided to go with another throwback: New York strip steak seared to an exquisitely tender and pink-centered medium rare, then bathed in a velvety black pepper au jus.

It felt extraordinarily luxurious to be eating food like this — escargots and handmade pasta! — at 11 o’clock on a weeknight. But the most surprising thing about Brazen Head was just how genuinely warm and friendly the service was — and, for a casual pub, how downright elegant. I wouldn’t have pegged this as the kind of restaurant where they swap out your plates and silverware between every course, and brush every stray crumb off the table. As soon as we mentioned to our server that we planned on sharing everything, she coursed out the entire meal, bringing one entree at a time, so that we could savor each dish at our own pace. All without the slightest hint of pretension.

No wonder the restaurant was still bustling even as the night wound down, a cross section of San Francisco all gathered in that hazy orange glow — young and septuagenarian; tourists and locals; couples dressed up for date night, and servers and line cooks just finished with their shift at some other restaurant. Everyone chatting up the bartender over cold martinis or polishing off the last bit of their prime rib plate. It was hard to imagine a more comfortable place.

Brazen Head (3166 Buchanan St., San Francisco) serves dinner Mon. and Tue. from 5–11 p.m. and Wed.–Sun. from 5 p.m.–midnight. The bar is open until 2 a.m. daily. No reservations.