Cioppino is an Italian-American seafood stew that originated in San Francisco, California.
The dish developed in the late 1800s among Italian immigrant fishermen, especially Genoese families living around San Francisco’s North Beach and Meiggs Wharf. Fishermen reportedly pooled parts of their daily catch in a communal pot; anyone returning without fish could ask others to “chip in.”
Traditional cioppino uses a mixture of Pacific seafood, often including Dungeness crab, clams, shrimp, mussels, squid, scallops, and fish. These ingredients simmer in a tomato-and-wine broth and are commonly served with toasted sourdough or French bread for dipping.
A common mix-up is treating cioppino as an old dish imported unchanged from Italy. It is related to Liguria’s ciuppin and other Mediterranean seafood soups, but the San Francisco version is distinctly Italian-American. The earliest printed description appeared in The San Francisco Call in 1901, under the name “chespini.”