Chef's Choice Seasonal Tasting Menu at Octavia

On a sun-dappled corner of Lower Pacific Heights, Octavia feels less like a destination and more like a discovery—the kind of neighborhood restaurant that becomes yours the moment you walk in. Named for the street it calls home, the space blends the original masonry and framework of a 19th-century building with a light-filled, open floor plan that manages to feel both elegant and entirely at ease. The open kitchen faces the dining room, which says everything about the kind of hospitality on offer here.

Chef Melissa Perello has been cooking since childhood, shaped by summers in her grandmother's Texas kitchen before attending the Culinary Institute of America and making her way to San Francisco. She honed her craft under Michael Mina at Aqua, later ascending to executive chef at Charles Nob Hill, where she earned early national recognition. After a period of deliberate rest and reflection, she returned with Frances in 2009—cooking food she actually wanted to eat—and followed it with Octavia in 2015, earning a Michelin star within the first year. A James Beard nominee for Best Chef California, Perello has built her reputation not on spectacle but on something quieter and more lasting: superb ingredients, beautifully executed. 

The tasting menu is driven by what arrives from the farmers market that morning. The cooking is seasonally anchored and California-rooted, with technique that elevates rather than obscures—flavors that are clean, confident, and deeply satisfying without ever feeling like they're trying to impress. Longstanding relationships with the region's top farms and purveyors keep the menu honest and the sourcing sustainable.

This experience does not include beverages.