Firefly Restaurant

If you want food and a front row seat to the procession of strangeness and cuteness that is Noe Valley on Halloween, you can reserve a table in our cozy parklet on !

One Direction will be on repeat all night as we remember the joy Liam brought to so many lives. 💔

Rosh Hashanah is late this year and so are we, considering we’re already half way through our special holiday menu. We’ll have homemade gefilte fish, chopped liver, brisket and kugel on our menu through Yom Kippur (Saturday the 12th). Shana tova and hope to see you soon!

Tomorrow night will be THE BEST night of the whole year to have a dinner in our cute ass parklet. Snag a reservation on before they are all gone!

obsessing over details no one will notice.

Don’t stress yourself out tonight by watching the debate live! Instead, you can come over and eat our yummy food, then you can watch the debate later and skip over the parts with the Orange Buffoon.

At the risk of offending , we made this glorious ray of sunshine; heirloom tomatoes with piel de sapo melon, Haley’s homemade ricotta, cucumber, Calabrian chile citronette, toasty crackercrumbs and minimint.

Ha ha, made you look! You may have seen this notice in our window, but worry not, we are neither being swallowed up by “big restaurant,” nor are we going off to join the resistance. We have just created balance in the universe by making Chef Haley an owner of Firefly, and the final step is squaring it with “the man." Haley has been working here since 2013. The restaurant we are today is in huge part a reflection of who Haley is as a cook and a person, so it is only right that she starts sharing the same headaches Brad has been enjoying for 30+ years.

You may have noticed our glow, as we softly opened our new parquelette built by .sf this week. These stunning tables from are available for reservations on ; childless cat people, dog people with children (furry and otherwise), petless persons and anyone else who's not too terrible.

Pardon our mess! .sf has been working hard on (the first half!) of our brand new and improved parklet (with all the charm of the original!) Here’s a sneak peek, with Chef Haley for scale.

Just a little reminder that despite the heat waves, past and future pandemics, ridiculous politics, looming kleptocracy and dismal prospects for independent restaurants, we’re over here still blooming our little blossoms.”

🌽 just look at this thing! We can't imagine a more beautiful thing!

Being on the coolest corner in town is often a challenge, but in times like these, it’s okay to be breezy. Stop by and take in a sampling of our soothing natural ventilation; maybe a dungeness crab cake and a glass of rosé, too.

We are thrilled to announce that, through your incredible generosity, we have successfully reached our fundraising goal! We are profoundly grateful for each and every one of you who contributed to our GoFundMe. Your support means everything and inspires us to go on (and on and on). We feel blessed to have such a kind and compassionate community standing beside us.
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Your friendly neighborhood Firefly

One of the requirements for the Passover Seder is to recline while eating, which symbolizes the fact we are no longer enslaved and can do whatever the f**k we want. If only that were true for those of us who are braising briskets and poaching gefilte fish for your Passover dining pleasure. Luckily, it’s (mostly) a pleasure for us, too.

Since we are regularly closed Sundays and Mondays we won’t be able to serve special holiday fare on the first two nights of Passover this year. The sweet counterpoint to this bitter herb is that we finally get to celebrate Passover with our other families. But fear not, we will still be serving holiday favorites, like this near legendary gefilte fish with fiery bi-color horseradish, from April 23rd through April 27th.

It may not feel particularly springy out there today, but we are here to remind you that spring has, indeed, sprung. The proof is in the perennial pea pancakes that have popped up on our menu. So would you judge us if we told you we used both fresh AND frozen peas our springtime favorite pea pancakes? It’s not just because fresh peas are nearly $100/case these days. We use them because no other preserved vegetable or fruit even comes close to competing with its own fresh counterpart. These little guys are somehow magically transformed, as if being gently encased in a magic ice chrysalis, their little starchy insides going through some supernatural liquidizing metamorphosis. They lend a sweet, rich succulence and depth of flavor that can’t be achieved by using fresh peas alone.

We see every challenge as an opportunity to give good service. We will give you a cozy blanket on a chilly evening, and for those 7 days a year when the angle of the sun is just right to blind you for 11 minutes in our parklet, we have a super cool solution. There are even cheetah print ones!

We post ingredients lists on our website because we are proud of how we do stuff, and because cooking is caring, and sharing is also caring. So according to math, we shouldn’t mind sharing about our cooking.

There is a lot to say about salt. Its proper use is something that can rarely be pinned down to a recipe. It’s why the phrase “taste for salt” is so ubiquitous. It’s a catchall phrase that really means “there is no other way to tell you how much to use, so good luck!”. Not to mention that the “right” amount of salt varies from one person’s taste to another’s. But the real challenge comes when seasoning something like a steak, or a chicken, or a slice of rutabaga for the grill. Only a combination of keen culinary insight and immaculate technique can ensure the correct amount of salt, and that the salt is distributed evenly over the surface being seasoned. To salt properly one must rely on the “feel” of the grain (different brands have very different feels and potency). We’ve used one brand of salt in our kitchen since we opened 30 years ago, because to change brands would mean changing ourselves as cooks and as people. We don't do this because we mostly like who we are. And now that salt is over 3 times more expensive than even a couple of years ago. Being a restaurant is hard.

To some this is a salad. To others it is a monument of the human condition facing these complicated times; optimistic baby lettuces alongside citrus near the end of its season, somehow still managing to shine bright while knowing the time has come for others to take the stage. The earthy golden beets making the case that they are messenger of the spring sunshine…Wait…Haley is telling me that it is just a salad that has savory granola on it which makes it a little crunchy.

This little blur ball is Yuki Sushi. She brings her human to visit us pretty much every day because she (and he) knows we make the best treats. If you are wondering if it is okay to bring YOUR dogs by, any time, but especially for dinner in our parklet, we are here to tell you it is definitely a problem if you have a dog and DON’T bring them. We are longtime members of the dog community (by relation) and trust us that word will get back to your dog that that we had treats and pets for them and they missed out.

“What is that thing?” you ask, as thousands have over the years. Well, it is an Art, and is called “Heaven’s Scoop”, part of a series of “celestial tools” by local sculptor Lawrence LaBianca. It has graced the skies over our bar since 1994. It is also a cauldron of secrets shed over these many years by departing staff. As we toast them out into the world, they are invited to deposit a scandalous Firefly secret (in paper form), and in return they get to read all of the past submissions. We suspect that otherwise content employees have left employment at Firefly for the sole purpose of engaging in this ritual

Firefly has always relished the challenge of pleasing steadfast meat eaters with our thoughtful and creative vegetarian and vegan fare. Chef Haley says it’s because we like to care about the people we feed and about the world we live in. Call her a Pollyannaish dreamer or call her a mad genius. Either way, you’re the winner because you get to eat these inspired zucchini, corn and poblano enchiladas verdes with cranberry beans, romaine, pickled red onions and cashew crema!

January is the time at Firefly when we help San Francisco public schools by donating a portion of the cost of your dinner to the SFUSD school of your choice. The past couple of years have handed us all some challenges, and our schools need help, now more than ever. 

So here we are, once again, giving you a chance to help us help your kids, your friends’ kids, your kids’ friends and even your kids’ kids, by coming in for dinner on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday during the month of January. All you have to do is mention your favorite SF public school to your server and Firefly will donate 20% of your food and beverage total to that school.

Please spread the word and help Firefly support our public schools. You can reserve any time through our website or by human after 3pm Tuesday - Saturday at 415-821-7652.