Signature Dishes of San Luis Obispo

Signature dishes

Tri-tip sandwich

Bottom sirloin tri-tip, grilled over red oak until rosy, sliced thin and piled on a toasted garlic-butter roll with barbecue sauce. San Luis Obispo's defining fast meal, done canonically at Firestone Grill.

History: Tri-tip is the Central Coast's cut: butchers in nearby Santa Maria popularised grilling the whole bottom sirloin over red oak in the 1950s, and the sandwich version became San Luis Obispo's own when Firestone Grill opened on Higuera Street in 1995 and made it the house order. The queue outside has been a downtown landmark ever since, and the Thursday night farmers' market pits sell the same cut by the plate.

Where to try it: Firestone Grill, Thursday Night Market Barbecue Pits

Watch out for: Gluten

Santa Maria-style barbecue

Beef grilled over red oak with only salt, pepper and garlic, served with pinquito beans, salsa and grilled bread. The ranch barbecue of the Central Coast, kept alive at San Luis Obispo's pits and steakhouses.

History: Santa Maria-style barbecue descends from the mid-1800s ranchero feasts of the Santa Maria Valley, thirty miles south of San Luis Obispo, where vaqueros grilled beef over coastal red oak. The rules stay strict: open pit, red oak, a dry rub of little more than salt, pepper and garlic, no sauce on the meat, and small pink pinquito beans on the side. In San Luis Obispo the style burns on at Old SLO BBQ Co., the Madonna Inn's oak pit and the Thursday night market grills.

Where to try it: Old SLO BBQ Co., Alex Madonna's Gold Rush Steak House, Thursday Night Market Barbecue Pits

Pink champagne cake

Layers of pink champagne-flavoured sponge under blush-pink whipped frosting, the Madonna Inn's signature bake since 1958 and the cake San Luis Obispo buys for every birthday worth celebrating.

History: When Alex and Phyllis Madonna opened the Madonna Inn on Highway 101 in 1958, they committed to pink: pink booths, pink sugar, and a bakery case anchored by pink champagne cake. The inn's bakery still hand-makes the cake daily and bills itself as home of the famous pink champagne cake, selling whole tiers to travellers and slices to anyone passing the Copper Cafe counter. It has outlived every trend to become the city's de facto celebration cake.

Where to try it: Madonna Inn Bakery, Madonna Inn Copper Cafe

Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Eggs

Chop suey

A wok toss of meat, cabbage, celery, bean sprouts and gravy over rice or crisp noodles. In San Luis Obispo the dish is living history, cooked at Mee Heng Low on Palm Street since 1927.

History: Chop suey is the great dish of Chinese-American railroad towns, and San Luis Obispo's version has a precise address: 815 Palm Street, where Mee Heng Low has cooked it since 1927 in what was once a dense Chinatown block anchored by the 1874 Ah Louis Store. Three families have run the noodle house across a century; the Kwongs, in charge since 2009, still wok the old menu of chop suey, chow mein and bao while the neighbourhood around them became parking lots and offices.

Where to try it: Mee Heng Low Noodle House

Watch out for: Gluten, Soy

Breakfast burrito

Eggs, potatoes, cheese and salsa rolled tight in a flour tortilla, the default California morning. San Luis Obispo's versions fuel surf runs, lectures and Saturday queues alike.

History: The breakfast burrito spread north from Southern California's taquerias in the 1970s and became the Central Coast's portable morning meal, equally at home in delis, cafes and surf-town counters. In San Luis Obispo it is a genre of its own: Sally Loo's rolls a locally sourced version with its cult sally sauce by the railroad tracks, and Lincoln Market's Almost Famous Breakfast Burrito has fed the Broad Street corner since morning-deli hours began there.

Where to try it: Sally Loo's Wholesome Cafe, Lincoln Market & Deli

Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Eggs

Bacon maple bar

A raised doughnut bar under maple icing and crumbled bacon, the sweet-salty flagship of California's donut counters. In San Luis Obispo it is a 03:00 institution at 24-hour SloDoCo.

History: Maple bars are an old West Coast doughnut-case staple, and the bacon-topped version spread through California's independent shops in the late 2000s as the salty-sweet order that separated crafty counters from supermarket boxes. SloDoCo, San Luis Obispo's 24-hour doughnut company by the Cal Poly campus, made the bacon-glazed bar part of its round-the-clock repertoire of roughly 100 varieties, and the local tourism board itself points night owls to it.

Where to try it: SloDoCo Donuts

Watch out for: Gluten, Dairy, Eggs

Fish tacos

Grilled or battered white fish in corn tortillas with cabbage, crema and lime, the coastal California standard. San Luis Obispo's kitchens plate them with Central Coast catch minutes from the harbours.

History: Fish tacos travelled north from Baja California with San Diego's surf crowd in the 1980s and settled along the whole Californian coast. On the Central Coast they carry local logic: the fleet lands at Morro Bay and Avila twenty minutes from San Luis Obispo, and downtown kitchens fold the catch into tacos, with Luna Red's fish tacos among the plaza's most-ordered plates on market nights.

Where to try it: Luna Red

Watch out for: Fish, Gluten, Dairy

Naturally leavened sourdough

Slow-fermented bread raised on wild yeast, dark-crusted and open-crumbed. San Luis Obispo's benchmark comes from Bread Bike, which mills California grain in-house and delivers by bicycle.

History: Sourdough is California's oldest food story, carried through Gold Rush camps and kept alive by the state's wild-yeast cultures. San Luis Obispo joined the modern grain revival when Bread Bike began milling California-grown wheat in-house on Parker Street, fermenting slowly and pedalling loaves to subscribers across town. The bakery's house-milled, long-fermented, naturally leavened loaves now set the city's bread standard, sold over the counter until they run out.

Where to try it: Bread Bike Bakery

Watch out for: Gluten