Home is where the food is good and isn't expensive (proxam's hometown w/o)Nov 01 '03 (Updated Apr 01 '07) Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Kitchen
The Bottom Line San Francisco has thousands of restaurants, many of them good. The ethnic ones I write about range in price from $6 to $15 per person for food.
Proxam's hometown write-off has stimulated a number of very interesting accounts of mostly little-known places. I've been at loss to figure out how I might participate. Having already written about Taipei, and one of my local homes, the Asian Art Museum, I finally decided that the way to write about my hometown was to do what I do in real life: flit from one kind of San Francisco ethnic restaurant to another restaurant, depending more on specific dishes I feel like having than on what kind (ethnicity) of food. Since Hunan Village closed (sigh!), I very, very rarely ever go to any Chinatown restaurants, so the area where I do sometimes eat that is most accessible to tourists and conventioneers is above Union Square. The climb to Post Street is not too daunting. I sometimes eat at one of the two Indonesian restaurants (Indonesia and Borobudur) which are very heavy on meat (located at 700 and 688 Post). With the closure of Burma House, the choice for Burmese food (a particularly notable non-Chinese dish being the green tea-leaf salad) is Mandalay in the Inner Richmond district (4344 California Stree)t. There is also a very good Cambodian restaurant in the Inner Richmond: Angkor Wat (45217 Gear Blvd.) What I think is the best Thai restaurant,is in the Outer Richmond district, Narai, at 2229 Clement, between 23rd and 24th Avenues). Parking in the vicinity is very difficult, which also discourages me from going to the excellent and elegant Vietnamese restaurant, Golden Turtle, on upper Van Ness (2211). I've had better luck finding parking around the less elegant but still excellent Le Soleil in the Inner Richmond (133 Clement). I especially like the Yum Nuer—charboiled sliced sirloin with onions, chili, rice powder, and lemon dressing on lettuce) and garlic quail at Narai. There are red, yellow, green, and brown (!Panang) curry dishes, excellent seafood, etc. At Chiang Mai, in the Inner(middle?) Richmond (5020 Geary at 14th Avenue, near Park Presidio), I haven't had trouble finding parking. The food does not seem entirely authentically Chiang Mai style, but its dishes are hotter (spicy hot) than those in other San Francisco Thai restaurants. At the corner of Ellis and Larkin, Vietnam II is the most inexpensive place I've found for whole crab when it's in season (January through March). In the Outher Sunner, Than Long has become famous for crab, but is quite expensive. Going out Mission Street, just past 30th Street (3489 Mission) is a pretty good Indian/pizza restaurant, Zante. They make an Indian pizza, though most of the pizzas are more conventional. It's definitely the place to go for Indian pizza! (That has tandoori chicken, lamb, chicken tikka masala, lamb, spinach, ginger, and garlic.) The other Indian food is good, neither the best nor the worst of the relatively inexpensive Indian restaurants around town (especially along 16th Street in the Mission district. Unlike most Indian restaurants, Zante waiters don't second-guess orders or try to push anything on diners, for which I am most grateful. Next to Zante is an OK Cambodian restaurant, Angkor Borrei, mysteriously proclaimed one of the world's best restaurants a few years back by the San Francisco Chronicle's food critic. At the time it was the third-best Cambodian restaurant in San Francisco. It's moved up to second place (behind Angkor Wat) only because Phnom Phen closed (sigh!). Going up Mission toward downtown, are various purveyors of burritos. I like those at Can-Cun with pieces of avocado rather than guacamole. Other folks have different favorites. Can-Cun wins the reader choice year after year even though fewer people queue up at either Can-Cun location than at the taquerias around 16th Street and Valencia (the mother of burrito fare there being La Cumbre). Just north of Cesar Chavez on 3015 Mission is Nicaragua. Although I might have carne asada or fried fish there, the dish I go specifically there for is tajadas con chancho y queso: fried plantains, stewed marinated (lean) pork, and fried cheese. Yummy! with onion salsa (not piquant) on the side. I don't know why it is necessary to ask for tortillas, especially when I ask for them when ordering, but every time when the dish arrives.... Further north, on 19th Street just east of Mission is perhaps the most exotic of San Francisco restaurants. I mean, there's another Tibetan restaurant in Berkeley, and so on, but Little Baobob is the only restaurant serving Reunion Island cuisine I've heard of in North America. Reunion Island is in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India and a long ways east of Africa. The creole food at Little Baobob is not like Louisiana creole food, though, like that, there's a fusion of French and African ingredients. But also South Asian: a couple of curry dishes. The Little Baobob menu is not extensive—the menu for food, anyway. Everyone (all four people) with whom I've dined at Little Baobob have found the food interesting and the wait staff friendly. The tropicale salad (mixed green with mixed citrus) is especially good. The entrées come with salsa on the side that is very piquant. Without that, none of the dishes I've tried is fiery. The chocolate cake is excellent, and the tasty fried bananas (plantains) are chocolate-decorated, too, and sliced crossways, unlike in Southeast Asian restaurants (in which whole bananas are fried in batter) or Latin American ones (in which plantains are sliced lengthwise). Over on Valencia Street at the corner of 15th Street is Mi Lindo Yucatan, which was designated by the SF Weekly as the best place in town for pig. It indeed has several delivious pork dishes. Pac Chuc is my favorite. The large salads are also good, and the friendly staff is accustomed to bringing two smaller plates so that it can be split. The tortilla chips come with two salsas, one of which is too picante for most. And some miscellaneous other favorites: For dim sum, I like Tong Palace (on Clement between 8th and 9th Avenues), which also has excellent seafood and banquets. (In the Moscone Center area, Canton, on Folsom at Hawthorne, is generally good. I especially like their foil-wrapped chicken.) However, we usuall combine dim sum with grocery shopping at Ranch 99--Dim Sum King in the shopping center in Daly City at the corner of Westmoor and Skyline (Highway 35). For tempura, (heavenly) Hana at 408 Irving, down the hill from UCSF. Good sushi, sashimi and more with easy parking is provided at Za-oh on Mission near South Van Ness. For Korean barbecue, Korean Village, at 4611 Geary (outer Richmond). For Indonesian food, Jakarta at 615 Balboa (inner Richmond)is the place. For pizza (thin-crust and thinner if one asks for it) Goat Hill is the place (300 Connecticut at 18th Street on northern Potrero Hill). It is more expensive than most pizza in SF, but worth it. (I ask for thin(ner) crust.) For crepes, Ti Couz, 3108 16th, near Mission Street. For large servings of inexpensive Chinese food (Hakka and Szechuanese), Szechuan Taste at 917 Taraval (outer Sunset) can't be beat. I've elaborated on that at http://www.epinions.com/content_2631049348. (1/17/05 update: Sigh, my favorite neighborhood Vietnamese restaurant, Lotus Garden, has turned into a mediocre Chinese one.) (3/20/05) followed by the overnight transformation of Burma House into a Venetian restaurant. This drove us to a pretty good Thai restaurant across the street, between Jones and Taylor, the name of which I need to check--not the mediocre Thai restaurant on the corner of Post and Jones). (4/1/07) After decades of going there, the Racha Cafe has been bought and destroyed by the owners of the mediocre Thai BBQ. My neighborhood Thai restaurant, Manivanh (on 24th street just east of Potrero Avenue) has become a weekly stop.  |
| Read all comments (4)|Write your own comment |
