An Amateur's Adventures In Dining Out, Part I

Everyone likes to hear about new places to eat. Admit it, when you read a AAA Guidebook covering some new city, you jump right to the restaurant and hotel listings, skipping over the reports of cultural activities and historical monuments. Or is that just me? When I was a kid on vacation, I loved those listings, checking out how many diamonds each place earned, whether there was a jacuzzi involved at the hotel or if it had cable, or if the place served pancakes and/or milkshakes. It was so fascinating for me that for a few trips, I kept a notebook where I wrote mini-reviews of where we stayed and ate. Were the bathrooms cozy? How generous was the restaurant with the maple syrup? Was there a waterfall in the hot tub? These were all significant details.

Finding a new local restaurant that you love is like the sudden joy of spotting an unmetered parking spot that isn't scheduled for imminent street cleaning, or finding a $20 bill on the ground. Except, of course, for costing you money, instead of either bringing it in or letting you keep what you have.

There is a reason why one of the most popular shows on KQED is Check Please! Bay Area, where guests recommend a particular restaurant and then visit the recommended sites of two other diners, and then they all gather around the table with the host and empty plates and decorative glasses of wine--that they don't get to drink until the very end, apparently, which seems crazy to me.

So in this spirit of collecting and dropping names, I will mention a few of the places I've fallen for in the city, grouped by neighborhood, in several installments as inspiration dictates. Keep in mind that as I am an amateur food lover, this is a guide more apt to be a Firestone guide than a Michelin. Except your tires won't be recalled after eating at these places. At least, that hasn't happened to me yet. Obviously you are in more danger of acquiring a spare tire, but that's another matter all together.

RICHMOND/LAUREL HEIGHTS:

BILL'S PLACE. This classic diner is shoehorned into 2315 Clement Street, come fog or sun. All you need to know about the food could be summed up by the motto on the refrigerator magnet: "Home of the Hamburger Since 1959."

The first time I ate there, I was with my Dad, and I had an egg salad sandwich, a pile of french fries, and a pint of Anchor Steam. More importantly, we were sitting on the back patio beneath a big green tree and next to the koi pond. You heard me, a koi pond.

JOHN CAMPBELL'S WILD IRISH BAKERY. For some reason, even though it was practically right around the corner from my old apartment, I never went in to the adjoining pub, The Blarney Stone. But the bakery became my ritual for weekend mornings. At first it was my reward for finishing an early jog through Golden Gate Park, but soon I realized I could skip all that exhausting exercise and just go straight for the scones. That is much more efficient, really.

They lost some of my faith when they stopped selling hot chocolate (really? In San Francisco, home of Ghirardelli chocolate?), but their light and fluffy hockey pucks of biscuit and chocolate chips were reliably tasty and were the perfect pairing with coffee, a newspaper, and NPR.

TATAKI. Sustainable sushi. Need I say more?

Well, yes, there is quite a bit more to be said, but still, sustainable sushi. They partner with Seafood Watch and the Monterey Bay Aquarium to provide the most environmentally-friendly sushi possible. Also, the sushi is damned delicious. Maybe that's the taste of feeling virtuous, but their crunchy spicy California rolls are amazing, especially during the after-work happy hour from 5:30-7.

Go there. Eat it. Support good people doing good work, and eat good sushi. Also, drink beer and sake. I did tonight, which is why words are kind of failing me to describe how good it was. Plus, I keep thinking about the ice cream mochi.

All this talk of food makes me sleepy. That's all for now. For those of you who have visited or who live in San Francisco, where do you like to go in the Richmond and Laurel Heights?