SF Gate's Top 100 Restaurants and Top Bargain Bites

Now this list from the San Francisco Chronicle should keep us busy.  Fortunately we can narrow it down just to San Francisco and they provide a map so we can look for nearby restaurants.  On the other hand, do we really want to go to the "top" restaurants?  They will be overpriced and we will be dissatisfied when we go home.  Plus there seem to be a dearth of them right around the apartment, except for Park Tavern and who wants to pay $12 for parsnip and kohlrabi soup, $9 for brussels sprouts chips and $14 for braised lamb "tounge".

They do list Piperade which is modern Basque cuisine by Gerald Hirigoyen, who has written some cookbooks that I've perused.  It isn't cheap with a la carte Basque Classics at $29, $38 for it as a 3 course dinner.  But it might be better than a run of the mill shepherder's Basque restaurant.  Hirigoyen also has a "tapas" restaurant on Montgomery called Bocadillos that's even open for breakfast!!  He must be catering to the financial market.  Of course his website says it is open Monday through Friday from 7 am to 10 am.  But that must be a typo...  He serves those boca sandwiches we got in Barcelona, but at a higher price, of course.   Poor Fernando, I think his Basque Hotel type restaurants have bitten the dust.  He'll have to wait for Noriega in Bakersfield.  Maybe we can revisit it with Vibe.

This morning I thought I would go peruse the San Francisco Chronicle to get myself up-to-date on things happening in San Francisco.  Unfortunately it is one of those publications that require a digital subscription to keep reading beyond the first paragraph!  Perhaps the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is still free because its subscribers are print people who don't do everything online.  The Chronicle article I wanted to read was about the SF MUNI pulling the cable cars and streetcars out of service for the 49ers playoff game on Sunday.  A lot of tourists are going to be disappointed!

And then the second article was on Onigilly, a fast food restaurant on Kearny Street which serves onigiri - Japanese-style seaweed-wrapped rice balls with savory cooked fillings, "Japanese Gourmet Rice Balls".  It appears you can get around the subscription requirement for the article if you come in through the backdoor via the Onigilly Twitter feed.  Onigilly also has a food truck at the Embarcadero for a "Samurai Snack".  That's some "cutting edge" food I could go for, although maybe not stand in line for; the three of us are too old for that.  The idea is similar to Sushi Fuku here in Pittsburgh except the rice is in triangles instead of rolls.


Now I'm looking at SF Gate's (the Chronicle) Bargain Bites.  There are 100 of those as well: the top 5 in 20 (!) categories, beginning with Bar Food (you have to be drunk to eat it).  Oh my gosh!!  Giordano Bros was inspired by Primanti's famous Pittsburgh sandwich!!  although the photo they show in this article is wings, not a sandwich...   Here's more on Giordano Bros with the appropriate photo.  It was started by a Pittsburgh couple and has a location in North Beach, not that we need to eat there. 

And HOORAY!  Bargain Bites even lists Tommy's Joynt, Daddy's absolute favorite (cheap and a large selection of beers).  I don't often get a pastrami sandwich, although Fernando still remembers a  little Jewish delicatessen out in the Russian district in the Richmond where we had a great lean pastrami sandwich a day or so before Willy was born.  He'll want me to ferret out that place or one like it.

One of the top 5 pizza places is Tony's Coal-Fired Pizza which is evidently the same as Tony's Pizza Napoletana except the first is a "slice house" and the second a full service restaurant.  And what is all this fascination with "coal-fired" pizza?

Bargain Bites lists 3 Vietnamese restaurants in Little Saigon (Ellis near Larkin in the Tenderloin) and the Lers Ros Thai restaurant is in that area as well.  Maybe a walk around (during daylight hours) would be interesting, if we can ignore the other tenderloin residents (Juan did not like them).  They also list Banh Mi sandwich shops.

One of the Chinese restaurants on the Bargain Bites list is the "House of Pancakes", Chinese savory pancakes that is.  It sounds interesting but it is way out in the Sunset District.  Then there is a Xi'an restaurant: Xi'an Gourmet in the Richmond, which won out over House of Xi'an Dumpling, a "typical dumpling/noodle house" on Kearny in Chinatown.  They do takeout but what fun is that when you have to do dishes afterwards?

Oh Golly.  In addition to "Chinese" the Bargain Bites has a "dumpling" category.   The Kingdom of Dumpling is also on Taraval Street out in the Sunset and its website starts out in Chinese and you have to choose English to read it!  Now that should be an indication of authenticity, right?

OK.  Got to finish packing up for the painters.