Ten casual Southeast Asian spots opened in 2025 — half in the East Bay, and four take walk-ins outright

Asked:

“What are the best new southeast asian restaurants in the bay area? They should be open since 2025, casual, and take walk-ins.”

A researched shortlist of 10 unique restaurants, all opened in 2025, spanning Cambodian, Thai, Lao, Filipino and Indonesian kitchens across San Francisco (4), the East Bay (5) and the Peninsula (1); none of the picks fell in the North Bay. These are recommendations, not an exhaustive census of every 2025–2026 opening. Two naming variants of Fikscue in the source rows were merged into one Mission Bay pick.

The picks, grouped by region

Lunette, a counter-service Cambodian spot at the Ferry Building, has the strongest press trail of the ten (37 evidence mentions) and takes no reservations — sfchronicle.com

Fikscue Thrive City was in the San Francisco Standard’s best new restaurants of the year, and unlike the original Alameda location there is no hour-long line — for now — sfstandard.com

Only Lao Garden (Berkeley) and Pakaoma Thai-Lao Diner (El Cerrito) accept reservations — optional, both stay casual dine-in — oaklandside.org

Three picks — InNenasKitchen, Kien Svay Cafe and Million Spoons — are counter-service or takeout with no formal policy stated, so they count as walk-in by format, not confirmed — sfchronicle.com

The ten cards

Details — click a header to sort

Restaurant	Location	Cuisine	Opened	Walk-in	Price	Hours (verify before going)	Mentions	Sources

Method: final shortlist of 11 source rows merged to 10 unique 2025 openings (two Fikscue naming variants combined). Each pick carries a review source and an operations source on independent hosts; no URL backs more than one row. Discovery scanned 1,531 unique web results and operational follow-up 2,327, with semantic extraction over the first 2,000 follow-up results. “Mentions” counts evidence mentions found for each pick. Research current as of 2026-09-17; hours and walk-in policies change, verify before going. Long dish and policy text shortened for space.

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