There’s actually a tradition of economics bloggers giving recommendations about where (and how) to eat out.
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bloggers → ’ → recommendations
Tyler Cowen wrote a whole book on the subject, as well as various blog posts, and maintains an Ethnic Dining Guide on the web!
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Cowen → write → web
I’m not going to be that thorough or go that deep.
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I → go → ?
But over the last year I’ve gone to quite a few restaurants in San Francisco, so I thought I might share what I’ve learned.
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I → go → what
In fact, this quest was born out of contrarianism.
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quest → bear → contrarianism
A lot of people say that the restaurant scene in San Francisco is mediocre, boring, or disappointing.
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scene → say → Francisco
The haters range from food critics and New York chefs to some SF residents themselves.
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haters → range → residents
I’ve lived in this city for a decade now, and although the restaurant scene here isn’t the best I’ve found — NYC and LA are better, and Japanese cities just annihilate all competition — I’ve always found plenty of good places to eat.
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I → live → places
When people portray SF as some sort of food desert, I’m convinced it’s a skill issue.
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it → portray → desert
So to be thorough, I set out to try all of the good restaurants in the entire city.
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I → set → city
That’s a project that’s bound to fail, of course — there are just too many, and quality can vary over time, and places are always opening and closing.
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places → ’ → time
But at this point I think I’ve eaten at enough places to write a fairly authoritative guide to restaurants in San Francisco.
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I → think → Francisco
What this guide is and is not
Writing about food is an inherently difficult thing to do, because taste doesn’t easily translate into language.
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taste → write → language
There are plenty of reasons for this, including:
People don’t biologically experience the same taste the same way.
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People → be → taste
The most famous example is how some people taste cilantro like soap due to a variation in one particular gene.
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people → taste → gene
When I try to describe the taste of a particular dish or ingredient, chances are that your physical experience of it will be different from what I experienced, and you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering if I’m an alien.
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I → try → head
Even if people did experience tastes the same way, people’s preferences would probably differ radically on most things.
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preferences → experience → things
Some of this is due to personal associations — conditioned taste aversion is very much a thing, for example.
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aversion → condition → example
It isn’t just what we like and dislike, either — how much we like and dislike each combination of tastes can make the difference in whether we like a restaurant overall.
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we → like → restaurant
Culinary experiences are not very uniform across the population, so we haven’t been able to develop as much of a shared vocabulary to describe what we’re tasting — if I’ve eaten Sichuan pepper and you haven’t, it’s a little like trying to describe the color red to a blind person.
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it → develop → person
And since most people have only eaten a small percentage of what there is to eat in the world, the region of overlapping experience across the entire population is small; thus, we simply don’t have many words that refer to taste experiences that most people have had.1
To see how hard it is to describe food in words, try the following exercise.
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it → eat → exercise
Pick five restaurants you like, and five you don’t like, and mix them together in a list.
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you → pick → list
Ask your favorite AI chatbot to pick five of these that you should go to, and five you should avoid, and ask it to explain why you’d like and dislike them.
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you → ask → them
Chances are you’ll have no idea what it’s talking about.
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it → have → what
AI can do the most advanced math on Earth, but describing taste in words is an exercise for which good training data simply doesn’t exist.
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data → do → which
So when I say my restaurant guide is “authoritative”, I don’t mean I’m an authority.
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I → say → ?
I just mean I’ve been to a lot of restaurants, and I know which ones I like and don’t like, and I can describe why I like and dislike them in terms that make sense to me.
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that → mean → me
But obviously this is all just me describing my subjective experience and hoping that it resonates with you.
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it → describe → you
So when you go through this guide and find yourself nodding in vigorous agreement with some of the recommendations, and screwing up your face in confusion at others, well…I warned you.
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I → go → you
Also, I’m not well-versed in the art of food criticism, so I’m not going to try very hard to describe the tastes I experienced at these restaurants.
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I → verse → restaurants
But I am pretty well-versed in the art of noticing patterns and thinking about explanations for things, and so this guide is going to focus less on the particulars of various dishes than on questions like “Why is SF’s food scene not the best in the country?” and “What kinds of restaurants are generally good in SF?”.
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kinds → verse → SF
As for my recommendations themselves, my criterion for ranking restaurants highly isn’t just how good they are.
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they → rank → restaurants
It’s what I call “yums per dollar”2 — basically, whether the culinary experience you got was worth the price you paid.
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you → ’ → dollar”2
So I’m perfectly happy ranking a good taqueria up there with a Michelin-star place.
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I → ’m → place
Speaking of Michelin-star places, I’ve decided not to include any places that are over $150 a person or so (before tax and tip).
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that → speak → tax
That’s already quite expensive, and I don’t want to be the kind of guy who recommends people to a bunch of restaurants they can’t afford to go to.
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they → ’ → restaurants
Finally, I’ve eaten at several hundred restaurants in SF, but that’s only about 10% of the total.
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that → eat → total
So if you have some recommendations for good ones I should try, feel free to drop them in the comments.
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I → have → comments
And of course this post is just Part 1 in a series; Part 2 will have updated recommendations, cafes, bakeries, dessert places, and some restaurants from out of town.
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Part → have → town
First, I thought I should address the big question: Why isn’t San Francisco’s food scene better than it is?
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it → think → question
…and 276 more, not listed.
