Passion of the City
If you want to know what passion drives a city, listen to what its people talk about in casual conversation. In one city it might be politics, in another movies. In a third the buzz might be about the latest art exhibit or the exploits of its gridiron warriors. In San Francisco the topic is restaurants.
The chef's finishing touches
Sure, the 770,000 residents of the City by the Bay love a juicy political story, a blockbuster movie, the excitement and culture of art, the weekly battles of their beloved Forty-Niners. But it's dining that really ignites their emotions. Where did you eat yesterday? Did you like the restaurant? Was the food good? Where are you eating tomorrow?
And there's always someplace new to try. At last count the city was home to more than 4,300 restaurants, one for every 179 residents. Even though it accounts for only 2.3 percent of California's population, it hosts 5.4 percent of the state's eating and drinking establishments, according to a study done for the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.
When San Franciscans go out, restaurants are where you're likely to find them. "People who live here really support their restaurants," says chef Hubert Keller. "That's why we have so many of them." The Alsatian-born Keller, whose career has led him to work with such culinary legends as Paul Bocuse and Roger Verge, likens San Franciscans' attitude towards food and dining to that of Europeans, who expect every meal, whether haute or humble, to be a great one. In fact it's more than just an attitude, Keller says. "It's a lifestyle."
That lifestyle is a major reason why this hilly, compact city of 47 square miles is considered by many to be the premier dining destination in the world. But there are myriad others, beginning with San Francisco's rich culinary history.
The immigrants who settled here and opened the city's first restaurants left behind a wealth of culinary creations still celebrated today. Sourdough bread is said to have originated in San Francisco, the product of French and Basque emigres. Italian immigrants contributed cioppino, a lusty, tomato-based stew of fish and shellfish. Other venerable local favorites include Irish coffee (coffee and Irish whiskey with a float of whipped cream), Joe's Special (sauteed ground beef with eggs, spinach, onions and mushrooms) and Green Goddess dressing (created in the Roaring Twenties at The Palace hotel for actor George Arliss).
San Francisco's port also played a role in its gastronomic development. In addition to welcoming waves of Asian immigrants who have made the local restaurant scene one of the most diverse and exciting around, the ships that docked in the Port of San Francisco helped turn the city into the commercial and financial capital of the West Coast, an essential component of a booming regional economy that attracted the skilled, the sophisticated and the affluent. Though today the waterfront is visited more by tourists than container ships, the Silicon Valley and San Francisco's reputation at the "Gateway to the Pacific" have admirably filled that role.
The influence of immigration can hardly be overstated. Beginning in the 1800s with the mostly Chinese immigrants who helped build the city, today it is home to flourishing Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese communities. Equally vital Latin, Mediterranean and Eastern European communities also have put down deep roots here. Each of those groups has stirred its culinary traditions into San Francisco's melting pot; a quick look at the city's roster of restaurants reveals eateries from Afghan to Armenian, Turkish to Tibetan, virtually every cuisine a hungry diner could imagine.
The Asian influence is particularly pronounced. Chef, restaurateur, broadcaster, and national food and wine authority Narsai David explains it like this: "Because San Francisco is a coastal city, its people have been exposed to the cuisines of the Pacific Rim. San Francisco chefs were the first in the country to incorporate ingredients like ginger and lemongrass and tofu into their everyday cooking."
And, not surprisingly, a major factor in its extraordinary dining scene is the city itself. San Francisco is a magnet for talented chefs and restaurateurs for the same reason it draws athletes and artists and corporate vice presidents: It's simply a great place to live.
"San Francisco is the most beautiful city in the U.S.," says chef, restaurateur and cookbook author Joyce Goldstein, who was exploring the rich vein of Mediterranean cookery long before it became trendy. "There are views everywhere, the people are nice. And it's a romantic city. There's an aura of romance to San Francisco that makes food taste better."
To chef Traci Des Jardins, a veteran of Left and Right Coast kitchens, three L-words sum up the city's appeal to her fellow culinary professionals. The first is "lifestyle." The other two are "loyalty" and "liberal." San Franciscans commit to their restaurants over the long haul, she maintains, showing the kind of loyalty "you don't find any place else." As for liberal,"San Francisco is a liberal stronghold, particularly in terms of being a woman chef," Des Jardins says. "Probably 30 percent of the top restaurants here are run by women. And people are more open to new ideas."
Renowned restaurateur and designer Pat Kuleto traces much of that openness to the social revolution of the late '50s and '60s, which spawned not only the beatniks and hippies but a new type of restaurant, one that rejected rigid European formulas and reflected the city tolerant attitudes and eclectic tastes. "San Franciscans are so free," Kuleto says. "You can do virtually anything you want, and if it works, that's all that counts."
San Franciscans may be free, but they expect their restaurants to work. Local diners are "very knowledgeable," says Lance Dean Velasquez, one of the city's next generation of celebrity chefs. "They have so many options, not just glitzy restaurants but great little neighborhood places."
In fact, many local "foodies" believe those "great little neighborhood places" are key to the city's reputation as a dining mecca. As Keller puts it, "The small places with good wine lists, good service, good food bring [the entire restaurant scene] to another level. They're more refined but still neighborhood, still inexpensive, still low-key."
Whether neighborhood or uptown, San Francisco diners are a demanding lot. It's their "cumulative palate," Kuleto says. "It's an overall consciousness of everything that makes a complete dining experience. It's not just the food, service, style and price. It's a combination of all those things, an understanding of their synergy."
It's also an understanding that, in large part, great food is made on the farms and ranches and orchards, by the hands of skilled artisans who craft cheeses and olive oils and vinegars with much care and no short-cuts. What chefs call "product" doesn't begin to describe the immense bounty of Northern California — a staggering variety of fruits, vegetables and produce, much of them organic and delivered from field to kitchen with hours of harvest; free-range chickens and ducks and hormone-free beef and lamb, raised on nearby ranches; Dungeness crab and salmon taken from the Pacific; oysters farmed in Tomales Bay; calamari and spot prawns from the waters off Monterey.
Not only is the "product" exceptional, so is the wine. The Napa and Sonoma valleys are only a little over an hour's drive from the concrete-and-steel caverns of the city's Financial District, and the wine country exerts a powerful pull on the food-loving visitors who are vital to urban restaurants' well-being.
"San Francisco is uniquely situated in the center of the most important wine-producing region in America," says David. "Napa and Sonoma to the north, Livermore to the east and Santa Clara to the south. The importance of California wine preceded that of California cuisine, but now the two go hand in glove."
Then, of course, there are the restaurants themselves. When pressed to define what makes the City by the Bay and its restaurants so memorable, Pat Kuleto says, "Don't forget the magic. There's something special in San Francisco that doesn't exist anywhere else."