Hotel Zelos San Francisco

There’s an argument to be made that this is San Francisco’s most central hotel, located as it is at 4th and Market, between the retail center of Union Square and the tech district of SoMa, and a short distance to Chinatown and the Financial District. Here, what was formerly the Hotel Palomar has been given a thorough style upgrade and along with it a new name: Hotel Zelos San Francisco.

Still intact is the classic 1907 façade of the Pacific Building — but the interiors have been brought subtly up to date. A hotel right at the city’s crossroads has to appeal to tourists and traditional business travelers as well as hipsters and tech-industry innovators, so there are limits to its eccentricity in terms of design. Here some well-chosen design accents — pops of color, modernist furnishings — add some visual interest to the rooms’ calm, residential coziness. (For contrast, glance out the window at busy Market Street and see what a difference a few floors’ height can make.)

There must be a hundred places to eat with a direct line of sight to the Zelos, but it’s got its own, the impressive Dirty Habit, which is both a craft cocktail bar and a proper restaurant, complete with indoor-outdoor seating and an Asian-influenced menu. It’s far more than adequate for fueling your excursions, whether to the upscale shopping on the other side of Market or the newly reopened SFMOMA.