Benu, Asian restaurant in SOMA district, San Francisco, United States
Benu is an Asian and American restaurant in SOMA that serves a multi-course meal with ingredients sourced directly from California farms. The dishes blend traditional Asian flavors with modern cooking methods learned from fine dining kitchens.
Corey Lee opened this restaurant in 2010 after spending years in well-known French kitchens, bringing those training methods to San Francisco. The space grew from a simple SOMA location into a recognized fine dining destination.
The open kitchen lets you watch how cooks blend Asian and American ingredients throughout the meal, showing how San Francisco brings different food traditions together. You can see the chefs working with techniques that mix the old and new.
Planning ahead is essential since seating fills quickly and booking needs to happen weeks in advance. You can reach out by phone or through the website to secure your reservation.
The kitchen creates a mock shark fin soup using modern cooking science, reinventing a traditional Asian ingredient through contemporary methods. This dish shows how old recipes get new life through today's techniques.
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