The 15 Best Dessert Places in San Francisco

The 15 Best Dessert Places in San Francisco

Who can resist dessert, especially in San Francisco? People already know the city has some of the best restaurants in the world, but they also boast some of the best desserts.

Whether you’re in town for a long weekend or a local looking for a new dessert spot, we’ve put together a list of the best dessert places in San Francisco. We are sure that your sweet tooth will be satisfied at any of the following locations. So, without further ado, here are 15 great dessert places in San Francisco. (Looking for boba? Don’t forget to check out our list of boba places and best pies)

Note that some restaurants listed here are temporarily closed due to the pandemic. You can check out their websites for more information. 

1. U: Dessert Story

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 1:00 PM - 10:00 PM during weekdays; 12:00 PM - 10:00 PM during weekends
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 3489 16th St San Francisco, CA 94114

Our Favorite Item:

Influenced by the dessert culture of Japanese, Korean, and Thai, U:Dessert Story prepares their homemade dessert with love using the highest quality organic ingredients. The store offers amazing desserts, including coconut pandan crepe cake, volcano bingsoo, and Thai tea lava toast.

You can also fulfill your cravings for sweets with their delicious strawberry cheesecake bingsu, mango sticky rice bingsu, hojicha bingsu, choco pistachio bingsu, and strawberry bingsu. They also serve cakes like Chocolate Organic Matcha Lava Cake, Hojicha Banoffee, and more. To complete the menu, they have organic tea, specialized drinks, and coffee to go with your cakes. What’s more exciting here aside from the taste and wide selection of flavors is that all of their desserts are also very instagrammable! Stay tuned as they are committed to creating new flavors and they will surely bring more into the menu.

2. OH Dessert Café

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 6:00 PM - 11:00 PM Tuesday to Friday; 4:00 PM - 10:00 PM Saturday; 2:00 PM - 7:00 PM Sunday
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 1919 Irving St, San Francisco, CA 94122
Phone: (415) 742-4917

Our Favorite Item:

OH Dessert Café is a Korean and Japanese-inspired cafe that serves delicious sweets and desserts. It’s closely similar to U:Dessert Story but of course, it still has its own charms. Their tiramisu soufflé pancake and matcha cake are highly recommended.

If you’re looking for a uniquely flavored pancake, you might find their Thai tea soufflé pancake a hit. The place might be tiny but it is well-decorated. Other desserts that you must try are waffle, strawberry shaved ice, ube soufflé, strawberry soufflé, ice cream sundae, banana split, honey toast in ube and nutella banana flavors. They don’t have a website right now but you can order through ubereats and other food couriers.

3. Meet Fresh

Price Range: $ | Hours: 12:00 PM - 8:30 PM Monday to Thursday, Sunday; 12:05 PM - 9:40 PM Friday to Saturday
Open During COVID for: Pickup
Address: 148C Serramonte Ctr, Daly City, CA 94015
Phone: (415) 741-5421

Our Favorite Item:

Meet Fresh is a restaurant with an authentic Taiwanese menu that provides flavorsome food and delicious desserts founded by Sister and Brother Fu. They started crafting soft taro balls as well as delicate herbal jelly desserts using selected ingredients. They also followed traditional processes in making these desserts to serve only the best-tasting desserts.

Their popular desserts are the Signature Icy grass, Hot Almond Soup, Hot Grass, Red Bean Soup, Tapioca, Hot Tofu, and Jelly Nodules. The recipe for the success of Meet Fresh is its tasty jelly dessert, almond pudding, and taro balls. The place is perfect with its accommodating staff at affordable prices. You will love the cozy atmosphere and beautiful décor.

4. Uncle Tetsu

Price Range: $$ | Hours:
Open During COVID for: Next Day Pickup for online orders, Same Day Pickup for direct store orders (Curbside pickup not available)
Address: 72 Hillsdale Mall, San Mateo, CA 94403
Phone: (650) 437-0399

Our Favorite Item:

Uncle Tetsu’s signature Japanese cheesecake founded by Tetsushi Mizokami in 1985 slowly garnered fans around the globe since its debut. Now, it has officially become an international phenomenon. This signature of theirs uses only the highest quality ingredients which combines the rich flavor of American cheesecake and the lightness of French soufflés. The result was a light and balanced flavor which makes it so addicting.

Aside from their signature, you can savor a lot of other Japanese-style desserts that combines the elements of culinary traditions into its food. The best servings you can try here are Good American cheesecakes, Strawberry cheesecakes, Ube cheesecakes, and soufflés. Staff highly recommend trying their soft fluffy cake and Basque cheesecake.

5. Sixth Course

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 1544 15th St, San Francisco, CA 94103
Phone: (415) 829-2461

Our Favorite Item:

Sixth Course is exclusively a “Dessert Boutique” shop specializing in small-batch production of handmade truffles, French-style pastry, and organic gelato made from scratch. The name Sixth Course was inspired by an old cookbook which labelled dessert as the sixth course in a seven course menu. Today, it is one of the best sweet destinations in San Francisco that serves various desserts with the finest organic and locally-sourced ingredients.

Not only that, they also use quality and sustainable couverture (chocolate made with extra cocoa butter). Plus, they also give back to the environment and to the people who have made their success possible. You should definitely try their tasty and delicious desserts – Gelato Pints, Butterscotch Pot de Crème Verrine, Oh My Gourd!, Voyage Cake, Buck Bars, 6 pack Chocolate, and It’s Pecan My Curiosity.

6. NaYa Dessert Café

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 12:00 NN - 11:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Pickup, Delivery
Address: 535 Octavia St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: (415) 926-8638

Our Favorite Item:

“Any time is dessert time.” That has always been NaYa’s motto. NaYa Dessert Café is a Thai inspired dessert slash restaurant. “Na-Ya” is a word that means to make others feel closer and the cafe is an embodiment of that word. They wanted their dessert to make their customer feel closer to them and to encourage them to eat any time. Because again, there is no perfect time to eat dessert.

Some of their famous desserts are Golden Toasted, Kaya Toasted, Chocolate Toasted, Salted Egg Custard Toasted, ice cream crepe, the Black Thai tea, and Mango Sticky Rice Crepe. They take pride in fresh-fruit, vaguely sweet yet rich flavors. But aside from their desserts, they also offer hearty meals like noodle, rice, and chicken.

7. SweetHoney Dessert

Price Range: $ | Hours: 4:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Takeout
Address: 15 Colma Blvd. Colma, CA 94014
Phone: (650) 822-2800

Our Favorite Item:

SweetHoney Dessert serves their freshest and finest authentic Hong Kong desserts with consistency and integrity that continue to impress the people in San Francisco. The restaurant makes sure to deliver high-quality natural ingredients and fresh fruits that will satisfy anyone’s craving for desserts and sweets. Their delectable desserts have allowed them to expand into over 600 stores in China, Australia, and Southeast Asia. They are dedicated to creating a new dessert culture.

They serve desserts such as Snacks (curly fries, Takoyaki, Japanese style shumai, etc.), Mango series (Mango Pancake, Mango Mochi, etc.), Durian Series (Durian Pancake, Durian and Grass Jelly with Vanilla Frost, etc.), Vanilla Frost Series (Snow White, Twins Snow Mountain, etc.), Sago Series (Mixed Fruit Sago with Coconut Milk, etc.), and many more.

8. DayDream Cake Shop

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 12:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 1788 32nd Ave., San Francisco CA 94122
Phone: (415) 370-2381

Our Favorite Item:

Daydream Cake Shop is a beautiful place to escape the bustle and buzz of the city by giving you a taste of delicious cakes. Located in the Sunset District, Daydream Cake Shop is outfitted in pink. And the cafe’s ambiance gives you that sense of peace wherein you can just slow down and relax.

This cake shop serves delicious whole cakes and custom cakes for special occasions, mini cakes, specialty beverages, and other confectioneries. The best cakes to eat here are the Golden Crumble Nutella Molten, Chocolate Molten with mixed fruit, and Earl Grey Chestnut Molten. They also offer afternoon tea services.

9. b. patisserie

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 8:00 AM - 4:00 PM Wednesday to Friday; 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM during weekends
Open During COVID for: Takeout
Address: 2821 California St, San Francisco, CA 94115
Phone: (415) 440-1700

Our Favorite Item:

b. patisserie is an elegant restaurant showcasing modern French-style pastries, American flavors, and local influences. It delivers delicious servings of cakes and entremets, tarts, verrines, macarons, and a range of viennoiseries. Tartines – open-faced sandwiches, complements the pastry. You can have their Vanilla Cassis Cake, Egg Salad, Chocolate Caramel Toffee Mousse, and others for the dessert!

This refined and modern salon de thé with an open pastry kitchen style was to bring the combination of talent of pastry chef Belinda Leong with the knowledge and expertise of another pastry chef named Michel Suas. It took years to start their partnership but once they did, they made their individual ideas a shared vision.

10. Dandelion Chocolate

Price Range: $ | Hours: 1:00 AM - 7:00 PM Monday to Thursday; 11:00 AM - 9:00 PM Friday; 10:00 AM - 9:00 PM during weekends
Open During COVID for: Pickup
Address: 740 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 349-0942

Our Favorite Item:

If you are craving chocolates, then Dandelion Chocolate is the best place to go. It is the best bean-to-bar chocolate maker in San Francisco’s Mission District. They have amazing chocolate drinks, brownie flight, and cookies. They also have unlimited self-serve homemade marshmallows.

It is the best store to have your chocolate dessert fill. They have been in the industry for over 10 years turning cocoa beans and organic sugar into single-origin dark chocolate. They employ a minimal approach to their food and products as they aim to highlight the distinctive flavor of different cocoa beans. You can try their chocolate products like nibs, chips, confections, truffles, and gâteaux. Just head over to their online store to order!

11. Mitchell’s Ice Cream

Price Range: $ | Hours: 11:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 688 San Jose Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 648-2300

Our Favorite Item:

There’s no denying that one of the best treats in the world is ice cream. This is why you shouldn’t miss this family-owned store ice cream shop that has seasonal flavors that will color your day. Their ice cream is so good that you want to come back for more and more..and definitely more. Mitchell’s Ice Cream offers ice cream with flavors including pumpkin, eggnog, spumoni, ginger spice, cinnamon, snap, and peppermint candy.

But not just that, they also have sundaes, splits, and shakes that will truly make a hot summer day still so good. Or if you’re looking for a combination, then go and get their delicious ice cream cake. They have pre-made cakes available for same-day or next day pick-up. If you don’t want pre-made, then you can order online two days or more in advance. Also, don’t forget to order their famous homemade eggnog drink, holiday cakes, and gift cards!

12. The Baked Bear San Francisco

Price Range: $ | Hours: 11:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 303 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: (415) 993-2327

Our Favorite Item:

If you want a dessert that is something different, The Baked Bear San Francisco offers you a dozen original-recipe cookies and ice cream flavors. Started by childhood friends Rob Robbins and Shane Stanger, The Baked Bear aims to serve inventive sweets in unique packaging like monstrous ice cream sandwiches.

Locals and visitors are welcome to choose their mix of ingredients to find the perfect combination they want. The store’s custom made ice cream sandwiches are delicious and perfect for your cravings. The sandwiches can be rolled through toppings of your choice ranging from fruity pebbles to oreo crumble. The ice cream, cookies, and sandwiches are all delicious and fresh! A perfect place to enjoy some treats!

13. Norman’s Ice Cream and Freezes

Price Range: $ | Hours: 11:30 AM - 10:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Outdoor Dining, Delivery, Takeout
Address: 2801 Leavenworth St, San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: (415) 346-3046

Our Favorite Item:

Norman’s Ice Cream and Freezes is ready to serve you with their super-premium ice cream with the flavors of banana, chocolate, coconut (macapuno), espresso cheese, mango, cookie dough, caramel praline, chocolate caramel crackle, oreo cookie, rocky road, strawberry, ube, pistachio, rum raisin, thin mint, and vanilla. They also take pride in their hot fudge sundae, a homemade Belgian chocolate hot fudge created by Norman’s wife, Priscilla.

This low-key shop has been great in serving guests with their locally made ice cream in traditional and exotic flavors plus Asian-style add-ins. If you are craving creamy ice cream in different flavors, Norman’s Ice Cream and Freezes is one of the best places to visit in San Francisco! This shop is open for takeout orders or for outdoor seating.

14. Bi-Rite Creamery & Bakeshop

Price Range: $ | Hours: 1:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Delivery, Takeout
Address: 3692 18th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 626-5600

Our Favorite Item:

One of the most popular ice cream stores in San Francisco is the Bi-Rite Creamery & Bakeshop. The store is offering homemade organic ice cream in different flavors, including salted caramel, chocolate, mint chip, balsamic strawberry, hazelnut with dandelion chocolate’s cocoa nibs, honey lavender, vanilla, brown sugar with a ginger caramel swirl, roasted banana, cookies, and cream, seasonal trio, cheesecake with rhubarb swirl, and may more! You don’t want to miss their seasonal sweets and baked goods! The perfect place for delectably balanced delicious treats.

But aside from these sweet treats, you can also shop their expanded selection of wine, spirits, beers, and ciders and have them delivered at your doorstep. And for your grocery needs, they can assist you and make your errands convenient and safe.

15. Stella Pastry & Café

Price Range: $ | Hours: 7:30 AM - 12:00 AM (Next day)
Open During COVID for: Takeout
Address: 446 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133
Phone: (415) 986-2914

Our Favorite Item:

Stella Pastry & Café offers traditional and Italian inspired pastries, treats, and desserts. Stop by the store and enjoy a quick snack together with your friends. Cookies and pastries here are an excellent choice and don’t miss to pick up a box of their cannoli because it is the best in San Francisco. This bakery and café deserve to be one of the best places for treats and desserts.

Also, make sure to try their Sacripantina—a rum-laced sponge cake which they also own the patent. You can enjoy this and their other treats with a cup of espresso. During the weekends, you can also satisfy your midnight craving as they’re open until 12 AM.

16. Tartine Bakery

Price Range: $ | Hours: 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Open During COVID for: Outdoor Dining, Delivery, Takeout
Address: 600 Guerrero St San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 487-2600

Our Favorite Item:

Tartine Bakery is a small, hip cafe that started in 2002 by Elisabeth Pruiett and Chad Robertson. Now, they have expanded into 4 locations in the Bay Area including Guerrero St. (where it all started), Alabama, 1226 9th Avenue, and SFO International Airport. They also have branches in Los Angeles and Seoul.

Here you can enjoy a variety of delicious selections from toasty sandwiches, best puddings, fresh coffee, and even tea. It’s definitely worth a stop if you’re craving for an afternoon treat.

17. Bob’s Donut and Pastry Shop

Price Range: $ | Hours: 24/7
Open During COVID for: In-store shopping
Address: 1621 Polk St, San Francisco
Phone: (415) 776-3141

Our Favorite Item:

If you’re craving a sweet treat during the ungodly hours then you don’t have to worry. Bob’s Donut and Pastry Shop is a popular independent donut store that will happily indulge your sweet tooth even at 3am. They have your classic donut flavors, croissants, and even apple fritters.

Their classic glazed variety is a definite recommendation. But more importantly, your experience here is not complete without trying The Big Donut. You can try them with traditional ring toppings, chocolate frosting, crumbs, sprinkles, maple, or just glazed.

18. Loving Cup

Price Range: $ | Hours: 1:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Open During COVID for: In-store shopping, In-store pickup, Delivery
Address: 2356 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
Phone: (415) 440-6900

Our Favorite Item:

Loving Cup’s Swirl Shops are now open. You can find them on Union St., Polk St., Divisadero, and at Bon Air Center. Aside from the frozen yogurts like the Salty Dog which is vanilla blended with housemade caramel and pretzels which is an affordable favorite, they also have other sweets. Their distinctive menu includes rice pudding and frozen yogurt pies. You can also try out their new flavors: Mango Dream, Power cup, and Brownie Obsessed.

19. Craftsman and Wolves

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM during weekdays
Open During COVID for: In-store pickup, Delivery
Address: 746 Valencia St San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone: (415) 913-7713

Our Favorite Item:

Craftsman and Wolves is a contemporary San Francisco Bakery and Patisserie. As a very modern bakery, they offer a wide selection of treats you can indulge in. Their morning bakes are guaranteed fresh and soft with flavors like kimchi, spinach feta, and the famous Japanese milk bread (Hokkaido).

Aside from that, they have case items like the Red Currant Cheesecake ($26) and of course, coffee and tea. Their chocolate chip cookie featured above is one of their signature treats. It has been named by Tasting Table as one of “Bay Area’s 8 Best Chocolate Chip Cookies”. These have crisp edges and a chewy center perfected by chunks of chocolates and touch of vanilla sea salt. They’re handmade and baked to order.

20. Mr. Holmes Bakehouse

Price Range: $$ | Hours: 7:00 AM - 2:30 PM during weekdays; 8:00 AM - 3:30 PM during weekdays
Open During COVID for: Delivery
Address: 1042 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94109
Phone: (415) 440-6900

Our Favorite Item:

This dessert shop is here to give an interesting and innovative take on sweet treats. This quarantine, Mr. Holmes Bakehouse devised a plan for their customers to become self-sufficient. That’s why they made their starter kits, bringing the tools to you to make your own Mr. Holmes Bakehouse delicacies. If you’re in an impulsive mood in the middle of the night, baking some sweet treats would be one good activity.

They have the Bread Starter, Scone and Dump Cake, Brioche & Bagel, Chocolate Chip, Churro French Toast, Mexican Chocolate Pie, and Pasta and Garlic Focaccia Kits. All of these are delivered at your doorstep. Or you can also try their cruffin, croissant that's baked like a muffin and then stuffed with the filling du jour. It debuted back in 2016 and has been a hit ever since.