![]() ![]() For example, the char siu is made fresh on-site - a rarity he appreciates having helped open Lazy Susan. But Ehler says the food shows unusual attention to detail. The Chinese restaurant, with its steam trays and menu of one- or two-item combo plates, looks like every other neighborhood takeout spot in the city. “I hope they have char siu,” Ehler says as we get in the back of the queue. By now it’s lunch hour and there’s a line of customers spilling out onto Larkin Street outside Emperor’s Kitchen. There’s one more stop before we arrive at Outta Sight to drop off sandwiches and doughnuts, and it’s just next door to the pizzeria. ![]() ![]() “You can totally get a good breakfast sandwich here,” he says. This one stacks a thick layer of bacon and a “Jimmy Dean-esque” sausage patty over fluffy scrambled eggs and melted American cheese, all on a croissant, all tightly wrapped in white butcher paper. The 6C is a close approximation of a no-frills, New York-style BEC, Ehler says. But Ehler’s go-to move is to pick up breakfast on his way into the restaurant - he buys three or four sandwiches for the team every couple of days, he estimates. The menu spans hot and cold coffee drinks, hot dogs, and sandwiches. It’s on the ground floor of a building just steps from the Civic Center Muni and BART station, so easy to see why this makes a convenient pitstop for commuters heading downtown. On a sunny midmorning weekday, only a few other people fill the outdoor plaza, and there’s no one in line under the royal blue awning of United Nations Cafe. The day starts just off Market Street at United Nations Plaza. “I mean, I’m glad I’m down here,” Elher says, as we set off on our tour. As a result, Ehler’s got a growing list of lowkey spots to recommend and today, he’s taking Eater San Francisco on a crawl of the spots he loves around Outta Sight in the Tenderloin. He walks or bikes the streets of San Francisco almost daily on his way to work and makes a concerted effort to try all the neighborhood spots and street vendors he passes on the way. He’s posted about the sometimes difficult realities of living and owning a business in the city but mostly maintains a positive outlook. Since opening the slice shop in the Tenderloin, on Larkin Street just north of Golden Gate Avenue, Ehler suddenly finds himself on a new stage: on the front lines of San Francisco’s slow and tortuous recovery from the impacts of the pandemic. To say he’s well-loved by those in the city’s restaurant world would be an understatement hundreds of people from across the Bay Area food community came together to raise money to cover the medical bills he accrued from the incident. He also became a leader in the conversation surrounding sustainable workplace environments for restaurant workers after having a near-death experience in the kitchen in 2018. When he’s not cooking, you can find him skateboarding all over the city - outside of the Ferry Building, through the streets of downtown, and, sometimes, in the basement of his pizzeria Outta Sight or just with pizza dough outside.īut Ehler isn’t just a champion of the city’s restaurants and chefs. He’s worked with beloved grocery store Luke’s Local, popular San Francisco brewery Fort Point, and helped launch Lazy Susan, the San Francisco-born Chinese American mini-chain. He’s been cooking around the city for well over a decade, running Asian American pop-up Seoul Patch in the early 2010s before opening Gung Ho with a crew of friends (it’s since closed), and eventually landing a job as sous chef at Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant Mister Jiu’s. ![]() He may have grown up in a small town in Iowa, but these days Eric Ehler is all about San Francisco. Join us for Tag Along, where local writers, artists, food authorities, and celebrities shine a spotlight on the best food and drinks in their favorite Bay Area neighborhoods. ![]()
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