The Bay Area is second only to New York City when it comes to the number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the United States, with a total of 55 to New York’s 64. Due to the pandemic, no new Michelin stars were handed out in California in 2020, so any opportunity for Northern California to overtake the five boroughs as the Michelin capital of the United States will have to wait.

Like all restaurants and bars, the delicious Goliaths of the high-end food industry—those that have earned a Michelin star—have had to adapt to survive, perhaps even more so than more casual haunts better fit for a takeout world. World-class chefs have remade menus for to-go containers rather than an artfully presented plate and pared down options to reduce waste and costs. It’s been a new world for fine dining, but these changes have also generated a golden opportunity for foodies on a budget now that these restaurants have lowered their price points.

That’s why my brother and I planned an entire day around eating some of the best food in the world, to go.

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The plan: Consume a full day’s worth of meals — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — from Michelin-starred restaurants via takeout and eaten at public parks throughout San Francisco.

Yes, it was the bougiest of challenges.

On a lazy Saturday, my brother and I ate and drank only Michelin-starred food, all for less than $100 per person for all three meals combined, something that never would have been possible pre-pandemic for even one meal. We would, in the safest manner that we could manage, attempt to treat our palates to decadent sustenance during a time that has robbed people of the pleasures of so much restaurant-quality food.

And so, with a little change in our pockets, we set out on our bikes on a beautiful blue day in San Francisco to our first stop.

10 a.m.: Lazy Bear (2 stars) + Mission Dolores Park

Lazy Bear started as a secretive group dining experience in 2009 and “went legit” in 2014, when it opened its location in the heart of the Mission. It earned a Michelin star in its first year and two stars in its second. With roots in communal-style dining — guests used to eat alongside others at two long tables — Lazy Bear was hit by the pandemic harder than most. But it rebounded with innovation and vigor.

Chef David Barzelay has a self-proclaimed habit of doing things a bit differently. So, when we searched for a Bay Area Michelin-starred restaurant that served a proper breakfast, this is the only one we could find at the time. We rolled up on our bikes to the little doorway cash register just a few minutes after Lazy Bear opened. A friendly young cashier greeted us against the backdrop of an empty, once-bustling restaurant.

We reviewed the menu, which at the time included à la carte options for breakfast and lunch that changed each week, like various pastries and sandwiches taken up a notch. We ordered the bagel sandwich with sweet smoked ham, avocado, and burned-orange egg (about $17). This was not your regular breakfast sammie; it was complex and just perfect.

We brought our treats to a steep western slope in Dolores Park on the blue-skied morning and sat on two blankets so as to avoid dewy shorts. We stared out at the city skyline and washed down our food with Lazy Bear’s cold brew topped with brown sugar whipped cream ($6), being careful not to sully the cup with savory drippings from the egg sandwich. We guiltily ordered a double-chocolate cookie with candy bits ($7) for breakfast, and we did not err in our decision. Unfortunately, Lazy Bear is no longer offering breakfast but recently reopened its outdoor dinner tasting menu.

Tickets now available for dinner seatings: Wednesday through Sunday, 5:30 to 8 p.m., for parties of two to five, starting at $245 per person. (Some items for take-home breakfast may be part of that meal.) Visit Lazy Bear’s Instagram to stay up to date.

Other Michelin-starred brunch/park pairings

• Spruce (one star) on a log along Lover’s Lane in the Presidio.
• The Village Pub (one star) in Woodside at Woodside Store Park.

1 p.m.: Ju-Ni (1 star) + Alamo Square Park

From Dolores, we rolled due north to our next location, Ju-Ni. The name, which means “twelve” in Japanese, is in reference to the 12 seats available to guests in the restaurant pre-pandemic. Now, those seats are sadly stacked in a corner of the restaurant while the staff prepares boxes of beautiful fish for takeout.

While the Americanized version of a poke bowl is usually a rice base topped with salmon or tuna and a wide range of accoutrements, like seaweed salad, cucumber, radish, etc., Chef Gregory Lee’s chirashi bowl ($39) is free from all the filler toppings. This bowl is a totally different experience, packed full of decadent seafood—salmon, tuna, crab, scallop, and ikura—along with some tamago and pickled vegetables, served over rice. The quality of the fish and the fruit of the Japanese sea in these bowls is unlike anything I have had before. That’s likely because 90% of the fish on Ju-Ni’s tasting menu comes from the famous Toyosu Market in Tokyo — some of it even shipped alive overnight.

The fish preparation and flavor are masterful, with each piece melting in your mouth — with the purposeful exception of the ikura, whose salty pop adds to the textural heaven of the dish.

We also ordered the ora king salmon bowl ($28), whose orange hue rivaled that of fresh tobiko. Obviously, you’ll want to wash this down with another cookie; Ju-Ni’s rotating dessert, the berry mochi cookie ($3), with its chewy center surrounded by a sugar cookie, is just right.

From Ju-Ni’s little storefront off Divisadero Street, we walked east along Fulton. We sat on our blankets in the adjacent Alamo Square Park (the dog park side, not the Painted Ladies side) with friends and a little chilled sake (starting at $11 per can).

Lunch and dinner menus are on Ju-Ni’s website for takeout and delivery, Wednesday through Sunday, 12 to 7 p.m. Not yet open for indoor dining, but pre-pandemic omakase seatings started at $169.

Other Michelin-starred lunch/park pairings

• Lord Stanley (1 star) on the slopes of Lafayette Park.
• Omakase (1 star) for a late lunch at the spacious Jackson Playground.
• Wako (1 star) on the Conservatory of Flowers lawn in Golden Gate Park.

6:30 p.m.: SPQR (1 star) + Alta Plaza Park

Our final stop on the Michelin crawl was SPQR, a modern Italian place on Fillmore run by Chef Matthew Accarino that has earned a star every year since 2012. Accarino was part of the first wave of chefs in the United States to start developing long-term partnerships with local farms. The ingredients shine.

We ordered our food via SQPR’s ToastTab page. After picking it up, we could smell our food’s aromas during the full five-block walk to Alta Plaza Park. We sat toward the top of the hill to get a full view of the city and the setting sun, but away from the dog park section to avoid any keen wet noses with good taste.

Our first course: arancini rice balls ($13), which at SPQR are essentially mozzarella sticks for pretentious adults, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Eat them in two bites if you’re around someone you’re still trying to impress, but a one-bite sushi method works when ravenous. The king salmon with lambrusco butter and autumn squash ($40) was a dish where everything on the plate — or in the box — fit together like puzzle pieces. The comforting warm flavors combine in just the right way to cause your eyes to shut for a moment.

As the sun starts to turn the western sky over Alta Plaza Park a dark orange, the wine cups are refilled, and the din of a contented group of close friends rises in a warm wind, you start to think that sometimes even the chicest restaurant interiors can’t beat the natural ambiance of this city.

Open for dinner (takeout and sit-down) Wednesday through Sunday and lunch Saturday and Sunday. We recommend scheduling your pickup ahead of time to ensure reserving one of the limited pickup slots. Wine is available from the restaurant starting at $35 per bottle, though we brought our own.

Other Michelin-starred dinner/park pairings

• Benu (three stars) at the Yerba Buena Gardens.
• Atelier Crenn (three stars) on the Marina Green.
• Rich Table (one star) at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley.

Missing ingredients

Our pandemic Michelin-star crawl was a fun, relatively safe diversion for a Covid-burdened world, but reflecting on it, we still missed so much of what the restaurant experience is really about — specifically for these establishments at the top of the food world. It became more apparent that going out to eat has always been more about the “going out” than the eating. Putting on fresh clothes, meeting friends, absently sipping a cocktail at the bar while waiting for a table, listening to the rise and fall of the other diners’ murmurs, hearing the busy kitchen, and watching the well-dressed waiters zip to and fro to meet the needs of their guests—these are the elements of a dining experience that you don’t realize you miss until they’re gone and you’re left dining out of a takeout box in a park. Dining is an experience best shared with friends and strangers alike.

For Michelin-starred establishments, the experience is as much about being doted on, maybe for a special occasion, as it is about the food. We never really felt like guests during our crawl, which was not the fault of the restaurant but the fault of the reality of the world. The premier restaurant experience is also about connecting with the chef through your meal, which is usually crafted into tastings that take the diner on a journey through a season or a place or a history. But the only journey you can take part in during the pandemic is the one from the restaurant’s storefront to your picnic blanket. No one is doting on you except your friend’s dog, who checks on how you’re enjoying your food every few minutes.

Put frankly, it’s not the same, and the charm and mystique these restaurants have to offer during normal times get lost when the human element is removed.

But this is the best-case scenario in dining today. You still get to support the proprietors, who are doing the best they can — still churning out magic with the highest-quality ingredients. And it makes you feel grateful to live in a place where you can enjoy them outside and with a view. Go do a crawl of your own, or find your own favorite food/park pairing. But you should expect great food and not, unfortunately, a great meal. That will likely have to wait for a return to normalcy.

Check restaurant websites for the most up-to-date information on menu items, takeout availability, and dine-in policies.