Looking for a great restaurant to take your most trusted partner to this weekend? And yes, I of course mean your dog. That’s Mersea, a restaurant and bar with some of the most spectacular views of the San Francisco skyline you can catch, because it’s perched at the edge of the waterfront on Treasure Island’s Great Lawn.
In fact, recently, it won a ranking as the seventh-best pet-friendly restaurant in the nation, according to TripAdvisor’s 2024 Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best Restaurants.
San Francisco executive chef and restaurateur Parke Ulrich (also to be found at Waterbar and EPIC Steak, and founding partner of the new Hurrica Restaurant in Redwood City) teamed up with tech entrepreneur MeeSun Boice to create Mersea, which is woman-owned and Asian-owned. It serves “comfort casual” food on a first-come, first-served basis; you can only make reservations for groups of 20 or more.
Order at the counter and then pick your seat with a view. It’s built out of shipping containers painted by New York artist Tom Bob and boasts a ton of fun extras like a mini golf course, bocce courts and cornhole. One TripAdvisor reviewer said they brought a bunch of kids there following a baseball game, who “had a great time playing mini-golf and running around on the grass outside, which let the adults sit and chill with each other over a glass of beer and a great view.”
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Beautiful bonus: Its Golden Hour bar serves whiskeys distilled right on the island from Gold Bar Whiskey.
You can take the ferry to get to Mersea (it’s a 15 minute walk from the ferry terminal) if you don’t want to drive, or take the bus or rideshare. Besides the dog-friendly ranking, Mersea is also ranked as #1 out of 4,917 San Francisco restaurants on the platform and has a full five-dot ranking. Sounds like we need to make a trip out with our frisky Jack Russell.