Re-creating favorite dishes from bygone Bay Area restaurants.

Cooking lost recipes from the Bay Area’s most beloved, bygone restaurants.

Discussing the meals one has enjoyed at a favorite restaurant is practically a sport here in the Bay Area.

Shift the conversation to a beloved restaurant that’s no longer around, and the reminiscing can approach Olympic levels of dreamy nostalgia. It seems the only thing the Bay Area loves more than restaurants is bygone restaurants.

I don’t consider myself an overly sentimental person, but I, too, can get misty thinking back on certain restaurants — not surprising given my choice of career.

Almost 15 years ago, I moved to San Francisco to go to culinary school and immerse myself in the Bay Area’s food culture. One of my favorite parts of my education was dining out at San Francisco restaurants.

Some of the restaurants I visited during my first few years here have faded from memory, but there is one that continues to shine bright: Coco500. It was elegant but not pretentious, and chef-owner Loretta Keller’s take on seasonal California cooking was eyeopening to a young culinary student like myself.

While I couldn’t afford to eat there regularly, over the years Coco500 continued to hold a special place in my heart, so when Keller announced in 2014 that she would be closing the South of Market restaurant, my husband and I returned for one last dinner. Our order for the evening was a parade of greatest hits: truffled mushroom flatbread, the mole-spiked shredded beef tacos, and my favorite dish, the batter-fried green beans.

Sure, I am bummed that the restaurant is gone, but I take some consolation in the knowledge that I can make those green beans on my own.

That’s the beauty of food and memory: My version might not be exactly like Keller’s, but one bite of those green beans with their lacy, tempura-like batter, and I’m transported back to that first meal, and for a brief moment, Coco500 lives again.

Inspired by this trip down memory lane, we have compiled a collection of some of the most memorable recipes from the Bay Area’s most beloved restaurants that have closed, from more recent trailblazers like Citizen Cake and Range to long-gone seminal restaurants such as Stars and Johnny Kan’s.

These recipes serve as a delicious reminder of just how special — albeit fleeting — our Bay Area restaurant scene can be, and that we should savor it.