Viv Chen’s Plus One

A bop-around day in the San Francisco Bay Area

Plus One is a column where we tag along with some of the best people in the best places with the best recs in town. Think of it like a highly specific city guide! Past Plus Ones have included Harling Ross Anton’s guide to NYC's Upper East Side and Eleanor Cording-Booth’s guide to Central London. And of course, you can read the À La Carte Guide to Los Angeles, my own monster list of recs, here.

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This month’s Plus One guest is Viv Chen, a fashion and culture writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. You may have seen Viv’s work in Vogue, The Cut, SSENSE, W Magazine, Elle, and countless other publications. Or you may already be a

Viv Chen

fan thanks to her Substack, The Molehill, one of my favorite newsletters about style, secondhand shopping, and other adjacent musings. Some of my favorite pieces of Viv’s include an essay about her very stylish, 80-year old friend Raymond; a lookbook of outfits inspired by The Princess and the Pea (the floating peas got me); and a recap of a $95 trip to the tailor (which is exactly the type of content I love—seemingly mundane, yet somehow captivating).

I asked Viv to give us a tour of her favorite spots around the Bay Area, and it’s a good list. As a reminder, free subscribers get to tag along to her first three stops, and the rest (plus a link to a Google map!) are behind the paywall. I’ll let Viv take it away!

Viv’s favorite place to buy groceries: “Ugh, there are so many to choose from—the Bay Area is lucky to have a bounty of amazing grocery stores and farmers’ markets. But my answer would have to be Monterey Market. They offer the best quality produce for the price. Last week, I bought white donut peaches, nectarines, apricots, Rainier cherries, Mara des Bois strawberries, and olallieberries!”

Viv’s favorite hidden gem: “If you are into perfume or learning about fragrance, you HAVE to plan a visit to the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley. It’s run by Mandy Aftel, a renowned independent perfumer and all-around cool, funky lady! You get to sniff scents from her personal collection, like ambergris (a byproduct of whale poop that is extremely rare).”

Viv’s favorite long lunch location: “Beit Rima, the Cole Valley location. I dream of their chicken shish. When I worked in San Francisco many years ago, I would often take MUNI there on Fridays for a luxuriously long lunch.”