Flea Street Cafe

This restaurant, which has been at the forefront of the local and sustainable zeitgeist for 40 years, manages to do the near impossible: It makes takeout feel special. Flea Street offers a full menu and packs it up in a variety of compartmentalized compostable containers so food stays nice and neat. Included in all orders is an amuse bouche, a seasonal nibble plucked from the restaurant’s garden (sugar snap peas and fingerling potatoes most recently); signature organic buttermilk biscuits; and mignardise of strawberry pate de fruit. There are also reheating instructions; a postcard about Meals of Gratitude, an organization that proprietor Jesse Cool founded with a Stanford professor of medicine to feed hospital workers during the pandemic; and even a mini bottle of her housemade hand sanitizer (75 percent alcohol scented with flowers and herbs).

Dig into wafflecut potato chips alongside silky, smoked McFarland Springs trout ($21), arrayed with fresh flower petals over slices of fingerling potatoes in a ringmold formation that survives transit. Moist Pacific halibut ($40) is done piccatastyle with lemon and capers, and comes with enough broccoli and purple potatoes for a second meal. Marin Sun Farms short ribs ($38) are forktender in red wine jus with homey whipped potatoes. Don’t forget the strawberry cobbler ($12), a square of buttery, tender cake layered with jammy berries; or a dozen frozen biscuits ($22) to tuck into your freezer for later.