On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:10 PM, David Bruggeman <[email protected]> wrote
> > Thanks again for all of the suggestions. Not that I was worried, but I > will certainly not lack for good food in Los Angeles. > > For the Bay Area list members - anything you'd recommend? I know In-N-Out > is around from my last visit, and will be based out of a Super 8 near Fort > Mason and the Wharf for the last couple of days. > Wow - Los Angeles might as well be Barstow when you compare eating out there to San Francisco. You have to work hard to find a bad meal in The City. I guess if you are looking for fancy places to eat you can find those in the usual guides. I don't know if Mel's Drive-In (50's Diner theme) is well known outside of California (it was featured in American Graffiti). I believe they have them in L.A. too, but I always associate it with San Francisco - I think it started there. There is one (not the one in the film) near where you will be staying, on Lombard. Staying on that theme, I have a friend who always swears by Barney's Gourmet Hamburger, which I think is in or near Fort Mason. We have a lot of vegetarians in our circle (to break out of the hamburger theme), and if my wife and I are out with them we often go to Green's, which may be one of the best vegetarian restaurants in the country, in a very nice location there in Fort Mason. There are a lot of hip yuppie type places in the Marina that can be fun if you are in the right mood (and obnoxious if you are not). A few other places that might not be at the top of the main guidebook lists (though I guess Green's probably is): My wife is from Hawaii, and I usually take her into the City for a weekend for either her birthday or our anniversary or valentine's day once or twice a year. Whenever we do, it is a given that we will have a Dim Sum brunch (her favorite kind of food), and we always go to the same place (her favorite place), which is not in Chinatown, but Yank Sing in Rincon Center. This is not near Fort Mason, it is over on Spear, near Market Street, not far from the Embarcadero Bart Station. It does not have a lot of tourist faux Chinese decoration, just really good dim sum. We used to live in the Richmond District (just north of Golden Gate Park). Clement Street, in that neighborhood, has a lot of small local places, and (at least when we lived there) a couple of great dim sum places, and a classic used book store - Green Apple Books, in the 500 block of Clement Street. Another favorite place for my wife when we are down there is the Ferry Building, which has a Farmer's Market on selected days, and some nice little places to eat in a cool environment. They also have a Gott's Roadside (used to be called Taylor's Refresher) there, which, back to the earlier theme, is known for having the best hamburgers and shakes and garlic and yam fries, in Napa Valley (their original location). The other kind of small place that is one of my favorites (my wife pays me back for Yank Sing's, which I like but I don't love Chinese, by going with me) is Biscuits and Blues - this is a basement space for blues and jazz music acts that also serves country/soul food. Probably experts in this type of food would find it second rate, but I really dig it, and eating it while listening to the good and often great acts that come through San Francisco is always a real treat for me. This is up near the Union Square area, on Mason and Geary (that's probably 3 or 4 miles from Fort Mason). Since I mentioned Green Apple, I guess I also have to mention City Lights Books, one of the most famous bookstores in the country, and part of a real San Francisco experience. That is in North Beach (Columbus ave, near Broadway) and of course there are a lot of nice little Italian and other kinds of restaurants around there, I don't really know the names of any of them, since whenever I go there with one of my best friends we hang out at the bookstore, then wander around the neighborhood till we find a place that looks good and duck in. If you do go there beware that if you go in one direction from the bookstore you will be walking down the girlie show area of SF. That does not really scratch the surface of what you can eat in SF, but is a good cross section of what my wife and like to do when we are in town. I'll say one other thing - I mentioned that you have to work hard to find a bad meal in SF - the main exception to that is if you are eating in the Fisherman's Wharf/Pier 39 area. There are some good places to eat there, but they are surrounded by lots of chains and really bad tourist-based sea food places. Nothing will kill you, except the pain of getting a mediocre meal in a mecca of great dining. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
