| Remember the little story Herb Caen told at Herb Caen Day a few months before he died? A San Franciscan dies and goes to Heaven and god asks him how he likes it there. "It's nice," the guy says respectfully, "but it ain't San Francisco." That's the way we feel. |
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Louis Martin and I am publisher of the San Francisco Restaurant & Dining Guide. Our aim is to cover the best and most interesting San Francisco restaurants in the key areas of The City: Downtown and Financial, Belden Place, nearby by Claude Lane, Chinatown, North Beach, the Embarcadero, Fishermen's Wharf, and the The Mission. We don't try to do it all, but what we do we aim to do better and more particularly and personally than any other restaurant guide of The City. We aim to capture the taste of the food, the smell of the kitchen, the ambiance of the dining room, the attitude and philosophy of the chef or owner, the feel of the neighborhood ...
How we do this is by eating at restaurants, talking with the chef or the owner, digesting a meal and what we learn, walking The City so that we know your neighborhood, and writing about your restaurant in a literary way to reflect the style and quality you put into your food and its presentation.
We don't try to be City Search—we don't list every restaurant in The City or any other city for that matter—and we don't try to be Zagat's, reflecting every diner's opinion, good, bad, informed, misinformed, inspired, or moody. And we certainly don't hire amateur critics at a minimum fee to fill out a template and call that a review.
Fine, you say, but why are you doing this, how did you get into writing a restaurant guide?
The answer is fairly simple: Like you, we want to make money doing what we love to do. CoastNews.com, the parent publication of the San Francisco Restaurant & Dining Guide, already covers features about San Francisco in these areas of The City. It covers art, entertainment, people, places, and anything else relevant to someone who gets out & about in The City and is curious and alive. And we found a common thread. All of our writers love to eat and hang out in bars and restaurants to get materials for stories—some of these stories being about the very restaurants where they hang out. We saw a natural fit here in writing a restaurant guide, so that is what we did. And we did it in a literary fashion, as that is what our publication is all about in the first place.
But finally, you may ask, what is your real interest in restaurants? Are you just trying to make a buck or do you really care?
We care and on more than one level. First there is the preparation, freshness, and originality of the food. But there is something beyond that. Then there is the communion that food offers. It is a way of coming together and having a conversation—maybe a light one, maybe a romantic one, maybe a political one, maybe, sometimes, a deep and philosophical one—but a way to come together and share our story with others.
Communion? Not far fetched in The City named for Saint Francis of Assisi. Maybe we do not talk about god tonight over pasta & feta with olive oil, lemon & basil, but we do talk. And that makes us a family. And who know, maybe tomorrow we will talk about god after viewing the latest work of Jean-Claude Gaugy at the Weinstein Gallery on Geary and having diner at one of those European-style places on Belden, followed by a cocktail at Enrico's on Broadway and listening to Vicki Burns sing her version of "So What?" Can you get much higher? Remember the little story Herb Caen told at Herb Caen Day a few months before he died? A San Franciscan dies and goes to Heaven and god asks him how he likes it there. "It's nice," the guy says respectfully, "but it ain't San Francisco." That's the way we feel. Please look over our pages.
Louis Martin
Publisher, San Francisco Restaurant & Dining Guide