So your Aunt May is in town from San Diego or Modesto or Charleston and you've promised her two days of guided sightseeing, just as long as you don't have to accompany her to Pier 39. (Don't worry: She'll make new friends in line at the Powell Street cable-car turnaround, anyway.) But where do you eat? Here are six iconic San Francisco places SFoodie often takes out-of-towners to:
The Cliff House is for tourists -- Louis' is for tourists with local friends. You don't go to the diner for the food, though the Hontalas family who have run the place for almost 75 years have upgraded their menu to incorporate local, sustainably sourced ingredients. You go to Louis' because you can stare out of the windows at the Pacific, the steam rising from your coffee mug an echo of the fog bank hovering on the horizon, and because eggs benedict provides enough fuel for a hike up to Land's End and the Legion of Honor.
Swan Oyster Depot is the counter offer for any request involving the Wharf, cable cars, and cracked crab. Take Muni to the Embarcadero, find the California cable car terminus, and ride the less-crowded car over Nob Hill to California and Polk, where you can line up for a stool at Swan Oyster Depot. Order enough cherry stone clams on the half shell, shrimp cocktail, and yes, cracked crab, and your guests may forget that they're not within spitting distance from Bubba Gump's.
Foodistas from Los Angeles and Vancouver may be able to make a case that their home cities have better dim sum, but visitors from any other part of North America should be brought to the Rincon Center Yank Sing for brunch. The spectacle of the rolling carts, the business-class service, the precisely pleated har gau and the crisp, oil-less stuffed crab claws -- Yank Sing is outsider-friendly but not dumbed down. Bonus tip: soup dumplings.
If there's one restaurant that exemplifies the energy, precision, and laid-back refinement of the San Francisco restaurant scene, it's Nopa. With a proper reservation, you can scoot through the bodies clustering around the door and the bar, and if the place strikes your visitors as too chichi to enjoy, loosen them up with a few rounds of cocktails. Laurence Jossel's exuberant California-Mediterranean cuisine works with both the risk-averse (the pork chop!) and more experimental diners (the salumi platter, the tiny fried fish). Pretend you eat here every week.
Really, who doesn't love Tartine Bakery and Bi-Rite Creamery?
1. Tadich Grill
Wood-walled booths. An 80-foot-long counter. Waiters in white jackets and ties. Tadich Grill wears its 162 years well, every scuff on the floors and chip out of the molding adding to its ambiance. The seafood-and-chop-house menu works for diners of the most conservative stripe (vegans, not so much), and the restaurant does right by classic San Francisco dishes like hangtown fries, sand dabs, and seafood cioppino.
