RSS Feed
Become a Fan
Follow Us
Los Angeles has often been accused of having an inferiority complex about San Francisco. I, as a proud native, have never suffered from this complex. And yet, every time I go to the Bay Area and eat, I am filled with longing. It’s just a fact: San Francisco does certain types of restaurants better than L.A. does. That’s okay — L.A. dominates in other ways.
I’m just back from a mini Bay Area vacation, where, without really intending to, we ended up eating at places that are so essentially of the Bay Area that they could be nowhere else. This was thanks to my friend Bob Goldstein, who’s spent the last two years commuting from L.A. to San Francisco for work.
Here’s the short list of the stars. Next I’ll come up with a short list of great L.A. places, the likes of which San Francisco just doesn’t have.
The science of siphon coffee at Blue Bottle
Blue Bottle. It was an easy walk from our South of Market hotel to this light-filled café behind the old Mint, and we returned every morning, despite the slow-moving line and struggle to find a bit of space to sit. Started by a guy so obsessive about coffee that he carries his own grinder on airplanes when he travels, Blue Bottle sells its small-batch organic beans directly (within 48 hours of roasting) and has a cart at a few farmers’ markets and a kiosk in Hayes Valley, but this is the only café. You can choose an espresso drink or brewed coffee (siphon-brewed or filter-drip), made from beans ground to order, and you may never have a richer, smoother, more delicious coffee in your life. (I know, we have Intelligentsia and LA Mill in L.A., and they’re great, but they’re still not Blue Bottle.) Add an order of fat Acme toast with gorgeous yellow butter or a fluffy phyllo-crust quiche studded with La Quercia prosciutto, and you will be considering moving to this neighborhood. Chez Panisse now serves Blue Bottle coffee, which pretty much sums it up.
66 Mint St., SOMA, no phone, bluebottlecoffee.net. Mon.-Fri. from 7 a.m., Sat.-Sun. from 8 a.m.
Chez Panisse. I can’t say anything about Chez Panisse that hasn’t already been said in the last 38 years, except that it still delivers the goods. The downstairs dining room has a wood-and-copper glow so warm it makes you feel like Christmas; there’s a sense of occasion in the air, but no stuffiness. Every bite of our four-course, $75 dinner was superb, especially the astonishingly tender and flavorful duck with tiny corn kernels, chanterelles and a zucchini cake. Sometimes I say that Lucques is our Chez Panisse, but that’s just a way to compliment one of L.A.’s best restaurants. In fact, we have nothing like Chez Panisse. But neither does any other town in America.
1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, 510.548.5525, chezpanisse.com. D Mon.-Sat. Modern American. $$$$ – $$$$$
Ferry Building. This astonishing example of urban renewal is worth a trip to San Francisco alone. Oh, it may seem just too foodie-yuppie precious for words, but only the heartless cannot be won over by its dazzling array of shops (Cowgirl Creamery, Scharffen Berger, Boccalone Salumeria — home of “Tasty Salted Pig Parts” — McEvoy Ranch olive oil), cafés (chowder from San Francisco Fish Company, asparagus quiche from Lulu Petite) and restaurants (including the exceptional modern Vietnamese Slanted Door). On Tuesdays and Saturdays, a huge farmers’ market wraps around the outside of the building. L.A. has nothing remotely like it. Neither does New York. In fact, a marketplace so wholly focused on local, hand-crafted, expensive food could probably exist (or at least thrive) only in San Francisco.
1 Ferry Building (end of Market St.), Embarcadero, 415.983.8000, ferrybuildingmarketplace.com. Open daily; hours vary by business.
The view from Foreign Cinema's bar
Petrale sole with summer tomatoes at Foreign Cinema
Foreign Cinema. The Mission may appear to be full of 20-something, fedora-wearing indie kids looking for the coolest bar, but it’s still mostly a struggling, working-class, largely Latino community. If you walked by the facade for Foreign Cinema, you’d never guess at the world within. Walk down a candlelit, red-carpeted hallway to enter a vast, open dining room (once a two-story department store) that opens to an equally vast patio, whose west wall serves as a screen for classic (if soundless) films. There’s a small bar in back manned by a terrific bartender (try the huckleberry-lemon concoction), a separate bar called Lazlo, an art gallery that serves as an extra dining room, an oyster bar and a staff of exceptionally competent people, including a dapper, 70-something host in a business suit with Chamber of Commerce-style lapel pins. The longtime chefs are Chez Panisse and Zuni alums, and the food is spot-on modern SF fare, including an amazing curry-flavored fried chicken, meunière-style petrale sole that had me imitating the opening scene of Julie & Julia, and a perfect chocolate pot de crème. The day may come when Boyle Heights has a place like this, but for ten years now, Foreign Cinema has been an only-in-San-Francisco experience.
2534 Mission St., Mission District, 415.648.7600, foreigncinema.com. D nightly, brunch Sat.-Sun. Modern American. $$$ – $$$$
Lulu's mussels
Lulu. For 17 years, this South of Market pioneer has remained the sort of unfussy but upscale restaurant that San Francisco does so well. I can’t think of a single place in L.A. like it, except for Twin Palms back in its much-missed early days. The airy, bow-truss-ceiling room is warm and lively but not too noisy, with a luscious aroma of wood smoke from the rotisserie oven. Dishes are generous and family-style, encouraging everyone to share, and if you order well, the prices aren’t bad. My group of four shared superb steamed mussels, an appetizer assortment including a rich, eggy leek-and-goat-cheese tart, rotisserie-cooked squab that was too blood-red rare, and a good pizza with heirloom tomatoes. The bar makes excellent gimlets and martinis, the wine-by-the-glass list is good, and you know you are in San Francisco.
816 Folsom St., SOMA, 415.495.5775, restaurantlulu.com. L & D daily. Modern American. $$$ – $$$$
Tony’s, On Saturday we took a road trip through Marin and up to Tomales Bay, and Bob and Katrin took us to this weekends-only seafood shack, which they’ve been going to since they lived in Marin in the ’70s. It dates to 1948, and inside it’s pretty much still 1948, except that a seafood meal costs $14 to $17 instead of $2. Everyone gets a plate of the oysters drenched in barbecue sauce, and all four of us got the calamari, tender filets cut from big calamari caught nearby and pounded to within an inch of their once-rubbery lives. Meals come with fries and a heap o’ salad, and while this is not food that will send Alice Waters swooning, you’re eating fresh local seafood right on top of the water in the middle of California nowhere, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
18863 Hwy. 1, Marshall (Tomales Bay), 415.663.1107. L & D Fri.-Sun. Seafood. Cash only. $$
Sure, SF has Campton Place, Kuletto’s, Postrio, Bix.
But we (LA) have Kogi, My Father’s Office, Chinois, Chaya, Fenix.
So what am I saying? Both SF and LA have some really remarkably good dining; hard to say which is ‘better’
I also spent last weekend in San Francisco, eating at a neighborhood trattoria in the Marina district and at a French bistro in Nob Hill. L.A. has countless little Italian restaurants, but most are not worth your time. Not so E’Angelo Trattoria (2234 Chestnut). The well-priced meals could have come from my Italian grandmother’s kitchen. Adding to the authentic feel, the wait staff and many of the diners conversed in Italian. We chose French the next night with Hyde Street Bistro (1521 Hyde Street). The food was great, but the service was horrific. We were a party of 6, and the waiter automatically added a 20% tip to the bill. Yet, we were mostly ignored for much of our 3 hour stay. If you can withstand less than stellar service, Hyde Park’s $30 prix fixe menu was a great deal with 3 delicious courses.
i live in san francisco but grew up in los angeles.
i miss la to death but food here is overall better.
but there’s no match for la korean food.
Yes, and there’s no match for L.A.’s Mexican (Oaxacan, Yucatecan, etc), Central American and certainly Chinese food. It’s just a certain sort of modern American restaurant that SF does so very well.
“Unfussy but upscale”–that’s exactly the phrase I’ve been looking for since moving to LA from SF in ’06. It’s always seemed to me that LA triumphs when it comes to street food and high-end dining, but lacks the vast selection of great, fresh, simple cuisine at mid-range prices that characterizes everyday San Francisco eating.
Now that I’ve lived both places, I’m inclined to declare that we’re all winners to have such a variety of delicious cuisine (and ingredients) in our state.
I think Intelligentsia is better than Blue Bottle. Not only is Intelligentsia’s coffee better, but it’s also less expensive – for the price of a half-pound of Blue Bottle, one can usually get a whole pound of Intelligentsia. The drinks at Blue Bottle seemed to lack the smoothness of Intelligentsia’s. The baristas at Intelligentsia are more personable, whereas the Blue Bottle staff was very cold and business-like. It takes much longer to get one’s order at Blue Bottle, too. The crowded conditions in the small Blue Bottle café in Mint Plaza are not really comfortable, either, especially when one has to crawl back through a mob of people to the counter to pick up one’s drink.
There’s actually a café in the Ferry Building now, too. It’s near The Slanted Door. I don’t think they do the food menu, but they have all the drinks, etc.
I disagree that LA has been accused of having an inferiority complex about San Francisco. I have lived here my entire life, and never felt that, heard that, or read that. If anything, it goes the other way.
In my opinion, SF is a much better food city in general. Mexican food and Chinese food is better and more diverse in LA, but you have drive long distances to get it; within the tiny area of SF you can find so many wonderful options that to me put it head and shoulders above LA food-wise.
I disagree that Intelligentsia is better than Blue Bottle, it’s a very different style and I think they’re both worth checking out. As to the cost of beans, Intelligentsia buys beans on a much larger scale than Blue Bottle. And most of the beans are only a dollar or two difference per pound.
If you’re interested in trying Blue Bottle Coffee in Los Angeles. I work at Equator Cafe, inside of Equator Books on Abbot Kinney. We just opened with Blue Bottle training and coffee.
Thanks for the hot tip about Blue Bottle in L.A.! Coffee fans, you should get over to Equator and check it out.
Comparing Los Angeles to San Francisco is like comparing an Old English Mastiff to a Chihuahua.
I am an LA native and had no knowledge of the SF versus LA rivalry until I moved to San Francisco. So, I generally have a fundamental issue with your initial sentence about LA having an inferiority complex, I have actually found it to be the other way around. Angelenos are not overly concerned about whose city has better this or that. I found that when I was in LA, I was too busy enjoying the sunshine and eating the best Mexican food around (outside of San Diego – much love SD!).
Ultimately, both places have their charm. But if I had to choose, I would have to say LA just because I get so much bile spewed at me for being an LA native from San Franciscans, that the image SF folks attempt to project as being open-minded and tolerant and culturally superior has been lost on me. Totally.
I feel the love San Francisco.
You’ve all made me feel so welcome.
The violent hatred of LA is especially exasperating because most of the time they are only able to point to Hollywood (which is but one of MANY Los Angeles districts) and Orange County (which is not even LA).
That’s like me hanging out in the Tenderloin (where I have actually seen people smoking crack rock on my way to work early in the am) and claiming that SF is a drugged out wasteland with a healthy helping of schizophrenics.
LA is almost 500 square miles with 3.8 million people and some of the largest ethnic populations outside of the home countries from which these groups came. The Filipino population alone is the largest outside of Manila.
SF is 7 square miles with about 800,000 people. Like I said, no comparison.
LA haters are many and they come in all stripes. But to know her is to love her and even if you don’t, no big. We will just keep letting the sunshine in, keep relishing in that beautiful ocean breeze (or grab a wave if we’re so inclined) and pick up some delicious Mexican food (without having to travel for it to one tiny neighborhood- sorry but the Mission is not all that) and those true Los Angelenos will keep letting the good times roll.
Right on, JotMe!
Thanks for the love. I really needed it! It makes me not want to go out here in S.F. The LA hate gets pretty nasty and is pretty hurtful. Makes me wanna go home.