Malik

I would guess it's more like a club/lounge on weekends, and hopefully more restaurant like on weekdays.

I went by Sanafir on Saturday night, we were meeting friends that were already seated at a table. But the bouncer at the door decided that nobody else could go into the restaurant, even if you had seats ready for you at a table. He said that a liquor inspector had just walked in, so he didn't want it to get too crowded inside. Anyways, after about a ten minute wait outside, we gave up and our friends came out to go sowewhere else...

Moscone is in a relatively expensive area of town, so most of the restaurants nearby would not qualify as cheap eats. But there's some good ethnic places within easy walking distance. King of Thai Noodles, a small local (SF-only) chain just opened in the Milano Hotel at 55 Fifth St (at Jessie, between Mission and Market), a couple of minutes walk from Moscone. It's the nicest decor of the King of Thai noodles, and unlike the other ones has a good selection of beer and wine. The specialties here are the noodle dishes and salads rather than curries. In particular, I like the beef salad and the larb, the noodle soups, the pad kee mao (stir fried rice noodles), and the gai gra prow (basil chicken). Another good choice would be Chaat Cafe at 320 3rd St just past Folsom, a stone's throw away from Moscone. They serve good Chaat (Indian street snacks), as well as some simple and relatively light curries (I like the fish one in particular). For the less adventurous, they also have Indian style wraps. Also Indian, a little further away, is the new branch of Naan 'N Chutney at 474 3rd St between Harrison and Bryant (under the freeway). They serve North Indian/Pakistani style food, with the specialties being the tandoori dishes and curries. Finally, if you feel like splurging just a bit, Farmer Brown just opened at 25 Mason St near Market, about a block further walk than King of Thai Noodles above. Check out their menu online. It's not very expensive, but you'll be hard pressed to spend less than $20 per person.

I had a very disappointing dinner at Nu back in May on my last visit to Vancouver. Three of us shared a bunch of small plates and sides, and were not impressed overall. The worst dish of the night was the bone marrow, and that's one of my favorite things in the world to eat. But it seemed like they had taken the marrow bones straight from the freezer to the oven, so the bottom half of larger bone on the plate was cold and thoroughly uncooked! A lot of the other dishes were either bland or unfocussed (scallop ceviche, beef tartare, onion tart, etc). We did enjoy the fried olives and the matchstick potatoes, but that's not quite enough to make a meal unfortunately...

I agree with Melkor, Ino can be quite snarky with non-Japanese customers. Aside from that, there are definitely some things I don't like about his sushi. I agree completely with you on the Ankimo, which is definitely the best I've had in San Francisco. But his shiny fishes tend to be over marinated, though the Aji is often good. For example, I had kohada at Ino and at Kiss a few weeks apart, and Ino's was definitely not in the same league. Also, Ino has a tendency to put too much wasabi in his nigiri, this seems to be a frequent complaint that I've heard from lots of sources. This is compounded by the fact that Ino does not seem to have fresh wasabi (maybe that's a regulars only thing), only the fake green horseradish. At Takara, the Ama Ebi is to die for thanks to the live tank and high turnover of a larger restaurant. I've always gotten fresh wasabi (I've only eaten at the bar, at Yuki-san's station) without having to ask for it. And I've definitely had some sublime pieces of fish there. On the last visit, the Hamachi Toro was incredible, much better than any I've had anywhere else. Also, the Hirame Usuzukuri was defintely better than the one I had at Ino a couple of months before.

While you can certainly get better food if you're willing to hop on BART, you also have plenty of good options in downtown Oakland itself. There's quite a few Vietnamese restaurants nearby for Pho (such as Pho 84, which may have changed names recently) or Bahn Mi (BC Deli for example). Other good choices include Tamarindo for modern Mexican and Luka's Taproom which bills itself as a Californian Brasserie (be sure sample the fries, but everything I've ordered there has been good). And there's an outlet of Top Dog, a local mini chain that serves the best hot dogs I've had anywhere, you should have lunch there at least once. If you're willing to take BART at dinner time (and the downtown Oakland station is right by your hotel), then you open up quite a few more possibilities. My first suggestion would be to take BART to Rockridge, where there's quite a few good restaurants within very short walking distance of the station. Places I would recommend in particular there are A Cote for French small plates and Pearl Oyster Bar for great seafood, in particular oysters and raw plates. Uzen or Tachibana are good choices for sushi, and there's also Zachary's for Chicago style deep dish pizza. I haven't like Oliveto much in the past, but now that Paul Bertolli is gone, the food is supposed to have gotten better. If you combine BART with a short walk, the Temescal area which is halfway between the Rockridge and MacArthur stations (about 10 blocks away) has many worthwhile restaurants. My top pick would be Pizzaiolo for really good Napolitan style pizza. Dona Tomas is an old favorite, one of the first high end Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area. There's also quite a few Korean restaurants around there, including Sahn Maru which has a great black goat stew (heuk yum so tang). Finally, if you feel like having North African food, Tanjia is a pretty good Moroccan restaurant. The last BART station worth checking out would be Downtown Berkeley. The area immediately around the station mostly consists of cheap eats that are popular with the student population. Of those, my favorites would be Top Dog (but there's a branch in downtown Oakland too) and Pie in the Sky for gourmet pizza slices. A short walk down University you'll find Chaat Cafe for good chaat and North Indian food, and Udipi Palace for top notch South Indian food. But the more interesting restaurants are in the Gourmet Ghetto, a pleasant walk up Shattuck Ave from the BART station. The standouts there are Chez Panisse (I prefer the cafe over the main restaurant) and Cesar. Have a slice of the daily special pizza at the Cheese Board across the street before dinner.

I had a very good dinner at Tres Agaves a couple of weeks ago, the Carne Asada was particularly memorable. I'd definitely recommend it. The other modern Mexican restaurant I like a lot is Tamarindo in downtown Oakland. I would recommend avoiding Tamal in SF though, we ordered seven different dishes there and every single one was disappointing.

Count me in for one.

Only a few dishes, like the Rendang Beef. But it's mostly just for show, as the banana leaf lines a real plate, so it's not serving much purpose. In Malaysia, it's not unusual for small restaurants to serve you the food on just a banana leaf, with no plate in sight.

Yup, there's a ton of Malaysian/Singaporean restaurants in the Bay Area. In additions to the ones mentioned already, there's the various Straights Cafes (SF, Palo Alto, San Jose, Burlingame), plus a few more in the mid peninsula (Mango Bay, Banyan Garden, Island Cafe), the East Bay (Raffles Cafe, Red Kwali, Banyan Tree) and SF (Singapore Malaysian and Penang Garden). I haven't been to Singapore Malaysian yet but have fairly high hopes for it. I have liked my meals at Banana Leaf, though I haven't been back there for a couple of years as I'm rarely ever in that area anymore. Straights Cafe in the city used to be good (I was not a big fan of the Palo Alto version), but it went downhill a few years ago and I haven't been back since.

Kelly's Burgers definitely hits the spot after a night of drinking, especially since they're open until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights. I've wondered in there many times on my way home after a good night of drinking.

Yes, Hamako has been mentioned a couple of times on this thread already. I don't know if I would call the couple very kind and personable. The wife is lovely, but the husband/sushi chef is definitely temperamental, especially with new customers. But the sushi itself can be very good, and his saba is definitely my favorite in town. Note that he's been talking about retiring imminently for the last couple of years, so if you like the place you should get over there soon. Ino is also solely a husband and wife operation, as is Tekka in the inner Richmond. The nice thing with Tekka is that the wife also makes cooked dishes, which are often better than the sushi. But there's no English menu for them, so you have to prod her to get the list of dishes for that night. And they only open weeknights, usually not until 7:30pm, and there's almost always a wait for a seat. It's quite possibly the smallest restaurant I've been to in San Francisco.

Tokyo Go Go is indeed a lot of fun, and the food is surprisingly good. It's hard to compare it to Ino, which does traditional sushi (nigiri and maki) a lot better than Tokyo Go Go. I think of the latter more as a fun outing on a weekend night to go drinking and eat light, rather than a proper sushi restaurant. Kiss is indeed quite good as well, though I tend to prefer the cooked dishes there. But I have on occasion had an incredible piece of nigiri at Kiss, on the last visit it was the Kohada (gizzard shad). I had Kohada at Ino a few weeks later and it was nowhere near as good. Ino is great for Ankimo (monkfish liver) and Aji (spanish mackerel). Another good place for traditional sushi is Takara in Japantown, right next door to Ino. Much larger place than Ino, be sure to sit at the sushi bar at the old guy's station for the best experience. The Amaebi (live prawn) comes straight out of the tank outside, and is really amazing. Hamako, which has been mentioned on this thread, can also be quite good. His specialty is Saba (mackerel), which is the best I've ever tasted anywhere.

Shhh! It's my neighborhood favorite, and although I really want it to prosper, I also want to be able to drop in a find a seat whenever I want. ← Definitely one of the perks of Incanto is that one can actually get in there with little notice. The prices are a notch above Delfina, which may be part of the reason why it's not as busy. And they tend not to schedule reservations as close together as a lot of other restaurants. One of the things I really like about Incanto is the way the wines are chosen to match the food. I almost always sit at the bar, and if the wine director is there, I always ask for a recommendation on which wine to get, because I'm not very familiar with Italian wines. Sometimes he has a definitive answer ("This is the wine to get") and sometimes he has a couple of ideas, but he's never steered me wrong. ← I totally agree with you on Ed (the wine director)'s advice. One of the reason I like Incanto better of late is that I think he's a vast improvement over the Italian sommelier they had before, who was more interested in upselling than in recommending the right wine. I've never been unhappy with a bottle of wine that Ed has recommended. That's indeed a really nice touch, I'm surprised more restaurants haven't caught on to this. Heck, I've never even seen this in a wine bar, where such a system should be mandatory.

I've heard very good things about Uncle Frank, and have been awaiting for it to reopen to finally give it a try. Thanks for the update. The other BBQ place in the Peninsula on my list of restaurants to try is Jimmy's Rib Shack in San Bruno. In the past, I've gone to Everett & Jones in the East Bay for BBQ, and I really enjoyed it (I've only been to the Berkeley location).

R&G Lounge is good, but it's more of a dinner place, I don't even know if they have dim sum. For dim sum in San Francisco, the usual suspects are Yank Sing (creative but expensive), Harbor Village (more traditional) and Ton Kiang (a little far from the touristy areas, so it may be a bit of a trek).

That's an interesting observation. I have eaten at Delfina at least a dozen times since it first opened, and have never had a problem with oversalting. But a friend of mine went there once and found everything to be oversalted, and she refuses to go back now. On the other hand, I do like salt a lot, so maybe I would not notice oversalting as much as others would.

Good point, that's exactly how I would describe the fries we got. Overly dark, sweet and soggy.

No, the lunch bowl that I had was served over rice noodles, it looks like the zong bao triangles are part of the dinner version. Yes, other than that one mediocre lunch at Wild Rice, I had very good meals during my stay.

I got to spend a few days in Vancouver last week, and in between catching up with friends and family I managed to eat three dinners and two lunches out. As usual, I was very happy with the restaurants I ate at, and even though I live in San Francisco, where we also have a vibrant dining scene, I always look forward to my trips up to Vancouver just for the food. The first meal was a late lunch at Wild Rice, which was very disappointing. I started with a "traditional recipe hot & sour soup with grilled squid." This was definitely not a traditional hot and sour soup as it tasted overly sweet and the broth was much more opaque than normal. The squid tasted fishy, almost as if it hadn't been cleaned very well. For main course, I had the "shiitake dusted aaa canadian beef tenderloin" noodle dish. This dish tasted OK though it was not particularly flavorful, I had to ask for some hot sauce to help spruce it up a bit. Overall, not a place I'd recommend based on the dishes I ordered. The first dinner was at Parkside, which was my second visit to the restaurant in three months. Just as the first time I ate there, a top notch experience with delicious food, nice atmosphere and great service. The menu consists of a three course prix fixe for $40, with something like seven choices for each course. A couple of the choices have a small supplement ($2 to $6). The wine list is reasonably interesting though a bit expensive (that's a general complaint of mine with Vancouver restaurants). I started with a mushroom risotto that was really tasty and perfectly cooked, and my dining companion had the watercress salad, which was well executed. For main courses, she had wild Copper River salmon, and I had roast loin of lamb. Both dishes were very good, and the bottle of red Burgundy we ordered went well with both. For dessert, she had the ubiquitous chocolate fondant cake, and I had a more unusual but equally nice rhubarb and vanilla trifle. The total for two three course meals (with one or two supplements cost wise), a bottle of wine, two glasses of dessert wine, tax and tip came to a little of $200, a fair price for the quality of the meal. The next lunch was at Bacchus, which turned out to be a good and reasonably priced choice for lunch. All the entrees are under $20, and since we ate light (three appetizers, four entrees, one dessert, three large bottles of water and two coffees for five people), we ended up spending about $30 per person with tax and tip. Definitely a good value. The highlight for me was the grilled fillet of Royal Sea Bream, which consisted of two pieces of fillet with the skin still on. The fish was cooked perfectly, especially the skin which was delicously crispy. Great dish, I would definitely order it again. Overall, everything we had was quite good, we left the restaurant very happy. The next dinner was supposed to be at Banana Leaf, but the Denman location had a 45 minute wait at 9:30pm on Friday night, and the Broadway location couldn't seat us before their closing time. Cru wasn't able to seat our party of seven either, so we ended up with Maurya as our third choice. It was a nice somewhat traditional Indian meal, our favorite dishes being the bindhi followed by the lamb vindaloo. The butter naan and the roti were very good, as was the ras malai for dessert. A satisfying meal, and with most of the entrees under $15, a good value as well. Not quite at the level of Vij's, but I'd be happy to go back sometime. Finally, the last dinner was at Chambar, and it ended up being the highlight of the trip. The five of us started by sharing four appetizers. My favorite was the hand chopped venison tartare, which was lightly but perfectly seasoned, and was the best tartare I've had in a long time (including the one I had on a recent visit to Paris). Another clear winner was the octopus carpaccio, which was topped with fried capers. Not to be outdone, the maple seared scallops with mushrooms were also excellent, which left the baked goat cheese tart as the only merely good first course. We then split two orders of mussels and two main courses. The Vin Blanc mussels were very traditional, cooked in white wine with braised leeks and other root vegetables. In this presentation, the sweetness of the super fresh local mussels really shone through, even my cousin who claimed to dislike mussels really liked this rendition. But the Congolaise, which were cooked in a sauce with tomato, smoked chilli, cilantro, coconut cream and lime, were absolutely incredible. We couldn't stop drinking the sauce up from our little bowls after finish the mussels. The only disappointment of the meal came in the form of the fries that accompanied the mussels. They were soggy, and the potatoes they used were too sweet, nothing like the delicously crispy, twice fried belgian frites I was expecting. For main courses, we turned to some of the Tunisian influenced dishes and shared the lamb tagine, which consisted of a whole lamb shank braised figs and honey and served with couscous on the side, and the pan seared halibut with a tamarind sauce. The halibut was good though not very exciting. We found the tagine a little bland, so we asked for some harissa (I was very happy when it turned out that they did have some in the kitchen) which helped the dish out. But the lamb itself was beautifully cooked, it just melted in our mouths. For dessert, we were all in a chocolate mood, so we shared the gaufre liegoise, which was served with chocolate sauce and raspberry coulis on the side and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, the belgian chocolate mousse, which was served on top of a white chocolate parfait, and the mocha fondant with hazelnut ice cream on the side. The chocolate mousse was just OK, but the waffle was really good. It tasted great on its own, as well as topped with the coulis or the chocolate sauce. The highlight though was the mocha fondant, which was a molten chocolate cake served in a little tea cup, with just enough coffee in the cake to give it a more robust flavor without making it bitter. We were all fighting over it, and had we not been running late, we would have ordered an extra one (or two). Which reminds me of one minor gripe, the service was rather slow throughout, but it was very competent in every other way so we didn't mind. The wine list was one of the best once we saw on the trip, and we ended up settling on a nice bottle of Gruner Veltiner. The gentleman that puts the wine list together came out to serve us the wine, and made a point of telling us that it was his personal favorite among the white wines they serve. The total with that one bottle of wine, two belgian beers and a couple of coffees was just a little over $50 per person, a great value for the best meal of the trip. I'm really looking forward to the next time I fly up to Vancouver. Past favorites have included West, Vij's, Cru and Tojo's (probably in that order), and next on the list are Baru Latino and Lumiere/Feenie's, as well as Banana Leaf if I can make it in.

For distinct Thai dishes, try Ozone Thai on Polk near Sutter (second floor). In particular, they have small plates on the back of the menu (which unfortunately they didn't put include in their online menu) that are different that what you'll find in most Thai restaurants around. You'll find things like preserved egg salad, duck in sweet soy sauce, salted fish, garlic and pepper fried pork intestines, olive ground pork, etc. The salads (asian mushroom and duck in particular) are also good there, but stay away from the desserts. For more standard Thai fare, I like nearby Thai House Express at the corner of Larkin and Geary. Nothing terribly fancy there, but the food is consistent and tasty. They sometimes have some interesting specials on the board above the kitchen, though some of them are only written in Thai. Ask your waitress to translate it for you, and insist when she tells you that only Thai people would like them. The Thai temples in San Bruno, Fremont and Berkeley have food at lunchtime on Sundays. Nowadays the food at the Berkeley location is catered by nearby restaurants, but the other two still feature food cooked by just regular Thai people. Typically they don't have very unusual dishes, but they make the standard stuff like larb, som tum and fried chicken very well. I've heard the spread is more interesting on days when there's a Thai festival going on, but have never tried it then.

I'm not generally impressed with the Palo Alto dining scene. Bistro Elan might fit your bill, though I think it's a bit pricey for what you get. Tamarine is my current favorite in Palo Alto, not a destination restaurant but good for the area. Three Seasons was good when it first opened but has gone downhill quite a bit in my opinion since. Evvia is pretty good but again expensive for what it is, and I agree that Zibbibo is not that great, though they do have a nice space and a good wine list.

I've always enjoyed my meals at Charanga, it's definitely an underrated restaurant.

Cesar may not be a destination restaurant, but I think it's better than you give it credit for. I've been to Bocadillos twice and ZuZu once (compared to four or five times at Cesar), and would not call either far better based on those visits. I think they're all similar in quality. Cesar is also very reasonably priced, and has a wonderful wine list with low markups. Manresa is certainly much better, but it's in a different class altogether, and obviously qualifies as a destination. That being said I have not tried Manresa's tapas menu, though it would be hard to imagine it being anything other than top notch.Cesar is definitely among the top ten restaurants in my East Bay rotation. For one thing, the menu changes daily, which makes it more appealing for repeat visits than nearby small plates restaurants like A Cote or Fonda. As far as I can tell, Bocadillos has not changed a single thing on their menu since they opened, so now that I've eaten there a couple of times, I'm not very likely to return soon. Another plus with Cesar is that it's open late, which is a rarity for restaurants in the area (Chez Panisse Cafe next door is also open late Friday and Saturday) and makes it a great place to eat after a show at Zellerbach. And when they're on the menu, those fried potatoes with herbs & sea salt are absolutely addictive.

I see MsMelkor beat me to the punch on the Mochica rec.