This August, we took a long-awaited trip to San Francisco, where we sampled as many of the city’s myriad types of cuisine as possible in seven days. Here’s part two of a series of capsule reviews about our gustatory experiences in the City by the Bay. Click here for parts one and three.
Breakfasts and Coffee Shops
Café Bello, a cute neighborhood café in Glen Park, makes quality coffee, and has some unusual offerings such as vanilla rose lattes and white lavender mochas. Its teas are also top-notch, and it sells excellent pastries, including chocolate-frosted donuts, ethereal almond cream puffs, and the largest apple fritters you’ve ever seen.
Higher Grounds Coffee Shop in Glen Park is known for its crepes, which come in savory and sweet varieties. The crepes themselves are lovely and light, while the bananas in the banana-Nutella version come caramelized.
Tyger’s Coffee Shop is a Glen Park institution: a classic diner that serves hearty versions of all the basics (love the fluffy raspberry pancakes) as well as some unusual specials. Who knew you could find tonkatsu chicken in a diner—or locate linguica outside of Southeastern Massachusetts?
Destination Baking Company of Glen Park makes scrumptious pastries, including flaky, tart apple galettes, crumbly apple streusel tartlets, and fluffy danishes.
Lunches
La Boulange provides very good value: huge, filling open-faced sandwiches with delicious sides for $8 or $9. The turkey sandwich, topped with provolone cheese and tomatoes, tastes almost like pizza, while the potatoes come crispy and seasoned with chives. The quinoa salad is vinegary and refreshing. La Boulange also makes macarons in a wide variety of flavors, which can be great little pick-me-ups.
Fisherman’s Wharf may be touristy as all get out, but it has some redeeming features: the delightful Musee Mechanique, a collection of working antique arcade games, and food stalls serving seafood fried or “cocktail” style. $5 or $6 will get you a cup packed with shrimp, crab, calamari, or other types of seafood, accompanied by cocktail sauce for a quintessential dockside meal. It’s a great alternative to fried seafood when you want something cleaner-tasting and less heavy.
Lappert’s in Sausalito serves crispy fried fish, albeit with limp, soggy French fries. Its fish tacos may be a better option: fried Icelandic cod paired with fresh pico de gallo and tangy goat cheese.
A Note: Lunches in Golden Gate Park
We didn’t try Café Academy at the California Academy of Sciences, figuring it would be typical museum food, but it turns out to have some nonstandard offerings, like pho. There was also an Indian food truck parked behind the colonnade by the Academy on the day we went featuring everything from curries to samosas to gulab jamun.
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