During the first week of the Bay Area shutdown, I received four recipe-exchange emails. These were from wonderful people I loved, and I let those emails just die in my inbox.

For sure, I was cooking every night, but with two young kids, no child care and homeschooling suddenly added to my parental resume, I had no interest in acquiring sourdough starter or finally learning how to make chicken potpie. As one friend said to me, “I can’t handle anything else right now that’s not going to turn out the way I expect.” Exactly.

So for comfort I turned to the recipes I knew well — the richness of bone-in pork chops and Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese; the simplicity of pasta with crushed tomatoes and mozzarella; leafy greens cooked down with a glug of olive oil. The internet was doing something different, of course, ablaze with photos of from-scratch breads and gorgeous, elaborate meals.

Now, as the Bay Area begins to open up as the weather has gotten warmer, I’ve dipped a toe in trying new things — a lightly breaded fried cod, a pasta with summer squash, parsley and Parmesan. We’ve also been ordering in from a handful of beloved restaurants. Here’s how fellow Bay Area folk have been cooking — and ordering in — for comfort during the stay-at-home order.

London Breed

Mayor of San Francisco

In the beginning (of shelter in place), I made spaghetti with turkey meat sauce, veggie burgers, grilled chicken, tacos. My neighbors are really creative cooks and they cooked a lot for me; they’re like family. We’d share with each other if we had extra.

I love cooking at home, but I don’t have a dishwasher and couldn’t keep doing all those dishes, so I was really happy when I saw that some of my favorite restaurants reopened (for takeout and delivery). King Lee’s is my favorite Chinese food restaurant, a real neighborhood place, and I love Indian food from Dosa and Saffron Grill. I’m a person of habit — Project Juice Test Kitchen, Limon Rotisserie, Pancho Villa, the Gold Mirror — those are my spots. I love the Salsiccia pizza from Delfina. I definitely get around.

My sweet tooth is no joke. Love the Just Desserts lemon cake you can get at Gus’s Market, and Mastro’s makes the best butter cake in the city. When the Ice Cream Bar reopened, the owner emailed me, and I went up there immediately and got their macadamia nut ice cream.
There's so much good food in this city, and several restaurants really feel like home to me. I miss State Bird Provisions, and sitting in Sheba Lounge, which has great Ethiopian food and live music. I just miss the community of dining out.

Mariam Nacify

Founder and CEO of Minted, San Francisco 

We have been up in Calistoga since shelter in place began, so there’s no delivery options really. Pre-COVID I was cooking maybe once a week on Sunday nights. Now we’re cooking every night. I’ve taught my daughter how to grill vegetables and my son how to make ragouts. My husband makes an incredible barbecued salmon.

I’m half Chinese and half Iranian, and in both of those cultures food and family meals are really, really important. It’s not good if you can see the back of the fridge. So it was a big shock during COVID to go into a supermarket and see empty shelves. I became really aware of exactly what I was buying so as not to waste anything.

My kids would say that their favorite thing I make is Persian lamb shanks with saffron rice. We also began craving Asian food, and I’ve started making ramen from scratch. I make a Chinese beef stew with eggs, an unusual dish for Chinese food. It has a little bit of anise seed, as well as the classic green onions, garlic and ginger. Near the end you put hard-boiled eggs in and braise them. It’s completely our family recipe, from my grandmother.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Novelist, essayist and author of “Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun,” San Francisco 

My father is Nigerian and my mother is British, so I grew up in a world of multicultural cuisine. My grandmother lived in York in the north of England, and we would have Yorkshire pudding, tea cakes and jams when we visited her, and then in Nigeria we always had a garden, and my mother would make bread and yogurt from scratch.

For me, comfort food varies by the season. Right now, I’m making these joyous multicolored salads — different lettuces, mangoes, toasted almonds, fennel. Plantains and rice are also a comfort food, and I’m afraid I also bake a lot of sweet things!

Growing up in Nigeria, we never wasted anything and didn’t have a huge variety of ingredients, so for me it’s actually interesting to go to the grocery shelves and find no flour — it feels like a culinary challenge. I’m trying to make do with less and experiment a bit more. Almond flour is a great substitute for baking cakes.

On Fridays we used to order in pizza, so now I’m making it from scratch, and pulling in my husband and son to help. We’ll chop mushrooms and peppers for toppings, and then I’ll save what we don’t use and toss it into a pasta dish the next night. The biggest change to my cooking is that my son is now home from college, and he’s 6-foot-5 and an athlete, so instead of cooking for two it feels like I’m cooking for four!

Gonzalo Guzman

Chef and co-ower of San Francisco’s Nopalito, Novato 

What’s funny is that I know I do a lot of Mexican food at Nopalito, and I love it, but my background is also in European cooking, and that’s more of what I’ve been doing at home — it’s helped keep my mind busy. I’ve been making my own pasta with my kids, and also sauces where I know the technique but I haven’t practiced in a long time, like bechamel or a really beautiful butter sauce, are coming back to me.

Before the (pandemic), for better or worse, we bought a house in Novato with a big backyard, so for the first time I’ve been doing a lot of outdoor cooking. We have a grill and a smoker, so I’ve been doing a lot of braised ribs, chicken and vegetables roasted on the grill.

As for what dish I’ve enjoyed the most, it might sound a little crazy since it’s very simple, but it’s a chicken breast marinated with sage and garlic, with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus tossed in lime juice. Twenty years ago, when I arrived in California from Mexico, the first place I worked at as a dishwasher would bring that to me for dinner. I made it the other day, and it was heaven. The simplest foods are the things that bring you memories.

Allison Speer

Founder and CEO of Allison Speer PR, San Francisco 

Before COVID, we always tried to be home Sunday and Monday for dinner, and I would cook those nights. So being home every night was a switch for sure. In the beginning I embraced it, did recipe sharing with friends. I made a lot of fresh homemade pureed soups, a lot of protein, we were trying to be healthy.

When restaurants started reopening (for delivery), our big treat was ordering from Cotogna. We’d get pastas, pizza, chopped salad. My go-to comfort food was their fried chicken with biscuits. Also the Italian chopped salad from Jane on Geary — called the A’s Favorite salad, after me and Alexis Traina — and the family meals from Spruce. When Nosh Catering started doing home delivery, with dishes inspired by some of our favorite restaurants, like the Shaking Beef from Slanted Door, we got hooked on that.

We really look forward to the time when we can support our neighborhood restaurants like Spruce and Sorrel and As Quoted by dining out again. Before the shutdown, I sort of lived at those.