Boudin is one of those places that’s been around and has accumulated reputation and status. This is especially true in San Francisco. I’ve heard how delicious their bread bowls (bread in general) tasted because they make it fresh in-house (you can see them baking bread through their kitchen window on the streets). They also have a rep for having tasty soups as well. I’ve seen this place many times when I make my way to San Francisco, but never got the chance to give them a try. This time we did, although just unfortunate that I’ve changed my eating routine and took out bread from my diet, but we went anyways since the boyfriend loves bread.

We headed to the main one on Jefferson street at Fisherman’s Wharf. We came on Christmas day, Monday during lunch and it was crowded. We didn’t do their full service restaurant that’s upstairs, rather we got in line for the self-seating one. The line can get crazy as it did when we went, but good thing is that it moved fast. Unfortunately, because there’s so many people and workers in the restaurant (might even be music playing in the background, I can’t really remember that part clearly), but the talking volume was so loud that ordering was VERY difficult. I repeated my order twice, but ended up having to scream my order to the order taker for him to hear me.

We ordered two of their Rustic Tomatoes one with bread bowl, one with no bread bowl (but got served bread bowls for both) and a Asian chicken salad. The salad was just a salad, nothing special to rave about. The soup was tasty though, but was it out of this world? Not really, but boyfriend did enjoy their sourdough bread bowl. Overall, it was an okay experience. I’d go back for the soup though! It was hot and warmed up the body nicely in the cold weather.

Note that finding seats was almost impossible on busy days. There’s three sections to the seating area, there’s indoor seats (has heater), outdoor covered seats (tented and has heater) and then outdoor outdoor seats that has no covering/shade/heater. We didn’t want to sit outside outside because of the cold, but there was ZERO seats for the first two sections no matter how long we tried looking so we had to opt for the outdoors, it just sucked how cold the weather was.

I think I’m going to try their full service restaurant upstairs next time, I bet there’s a wonderful view from up there and you wouldn’t have to wait in line or find our own seats making the process easier and more efficient since I found their self-service one lacking in terms of the way the setup was arranged.

Rating: ★★★☆☆
Address: 160 Jefferson St, San Francisco, CA 94133
Hours:
Sunday-Thursday: 8:00am-10:00pm
Friday-Saturday: 8:00am-10:30pm