The homes for sale in San Francisco are drastically overpriced. We found a small house that we liked in Cole Valley for a mere $1.6 million. When it came to actually pulling out a checkbook though, we balked. The loan, insurance and property taxes would total to nearly $10,000/month. No friggin’ way.
So, as of today, we are back to looking for rentals. Rents, unlike the housing market, have been decreasing this past year. We are solidly on the ‘America is in a housing bubble’ side of the fence, and betting that even if prices do not decline, at least the quality of homes available will increase over the next few years.
Ah, San Francisco Surreal Estate…
Hey on the other side of the stress spectrum, we’ve checked out a number of restaurants in the city:
Near Nob Hill:
* U-Lee Chinese (1468 Hyde/Jackson) - hole in the wall Chinese place where the cops eat; largest pork potstickers in San Francisco and since the place is so small, they’ll cook just about any request
* Ristorante Milano (1448 Pacific/Hyde) - brushetta to die for; our waiter was from Venice and the pasta and saltimbocca were fantastic
* Pesce (2227 Polk) - great bustling atmosphere and a wonderful sounding menu, but it is the only place where we’ve had tuna in a brown sauce; we must have had a wrong few turns on ordering because everything that came out of the kitchen got a ‘how very odd’ out of us when it hit the table
* Antica Trattoria (2400 Polk) - sister restaurant of Pesce, the service was horrible the night we went, everything was extruciatingly slow and the timing left one of us without food for so long that the plate was empty before the second entree arrived; sigh, and the pasta was just adequate - could we get a refund on this one?
* Casablanca Cafe (1609 Polk) - scrappily decorated coffee shop that also serves some huge and fantastic falafels
* Nick’s Crispy Tacos (1500 Broadway/Polk) - mid-day taqueria inside the swanky (read Red Velvet walls with Silver Mirrors) Harry Denton’s nightclub; we tried the baja fish tacos, but they were too greasy to get again.. and Derrell gave a thumbs down on the elote (corn w/ cojito cheese sprinkled with red pepper) due to the sourcream like covering on it… so we suffered an ordering failure; the place was popular with local workers and had a line out the door and the chips and salsa were good
* Sushi Rapture (1400 Leavenworth) - intimate (um, tiny) neighborhood sushi bar that serves up some fresh sushi conveniently located at the TOP of Nob Hill, so this is in our lazy dining repertoire; the yin-yang contrast of the soothing modern decor with a blaring sports game on the television in the corner gets to us sometimes, though
* Chameleon (1299 Pacific/Leavenworth) - a new coffeeshop with free wi-fi and healthy sandwiches, salads and fresh lemonade; the wi-fi is starting to draw in the customers, most tables have a laptop deployed
* East Coast West Delicatessen (1725 Polk) - Bah! Rude staff, over-stuffed poorly layered sandwiches (3″ of meat on one side and none on the other? wtf?), expensive, full of very fat tourists with screaming kids and really, really noisy. Guess we hit it on a bad day, eh?
* Zante’s Pizza & Indian Cuisine (3489 Mission) - Delivery to Nob Hill! Indian food, the pizza was, um, different… and we, almost, liked it. What is Indian Pizza? Check this out: “Topped with Spinach, Egg Plant, Cauliflower, Ginger, Garlic, Green Onions, Cilantro, Lamb, Tandoori Chicken & Prawns” You’ve got to try it at least once; they sell it by the slice in the restaurant.
* BKK (1022 Bush/Jones) - Thai delivery to Nob Hill; our order was not spicy and yet it was oily. Hmm.
Mission/Noe Valley:
* Pancho Villa’s Taqueria (3071 16th) - Holy Cow! So far, this is our favorite burrito shop in the city. The carne asada burritos are beyond good and the salsas are state fair award winners. It is hard not eating here everyday.
* Casa Sanchez (2770 24th/Hampshire) - Adequate burritos. These folks sell the Casa Sanchez brand chips and salsas in the stores in the bay area. The place has a good outdoor seating area in back, but the front looks like they haven’t done much to update the place since it opened as a tortilla factory in the 1920’s. Still the outdoor seating is a good find, and they have an intriguing story about marketing, San Francisco-style.
* The Last Supper Club (1199 Valencia/23rd) - we ate early here, around 7:00 at the bar and by the time we were finished, the place was a zoo; this is definitely a meet-your-30-something-friends dressed in black sweaters, black coats, black pants kind of place. The food was extremely good, the mojitos adequate, but we’ll pass on the tuna carppaccio, that was just plain weird.
* Walzwerk (381 S. Van Ness/15th) - East German food meets industrial design, served by the two girl owners with their accents intact; potato pancakes and schnitzel for everyone!
* Ristorante Bacco (737 Diamond/24th) - warm atmosphere, solid food, tiramisu to die for; seating was easy on a Sunday evening; the table next to us was discussing the menu in Italian with the waiter; Now, just how Noe Valley is that?
* Andalu (3198 16th/Guerrero) - weird tapas with some of the worst service we’ve had in the city; I was grilled by our waiter as to why I would not eat dairy, I guess she had never heard of anyone being lactose intolerant. Somehow, explaining what dairy does to a person’s indigestion in order to get your order in to the kitchen correctly, is just not my idea of a good dining experience. For all that trouble, every dish that she assured us did not have dairy in it, came out with dairy. It was the first time we did not leave a tip in San Francisco. We stopped our meal short, and went down the street to Tokyo Go Go to finish our meal.
* Tokyo Go Go (3174 16th) - very fresh sushi, white futuristic Jetson interior; a fine respite from Andalu and the possessed waitress
* Picaro (3120 16th) - real Spanish-style tapas: garlicky, greasy and adequately good; we hit it when the Apple Conference was in town and a suprising number of people around us had made their way to this restaurant from SOMA, go figure.
Fillmore/Pacific Heights:
* Fresca (2114 Fillmore/California) - Peruvian fish restaurant that has good counter seating, giving us a great vantage point to inspect everything coming out of the kitchen; everything looked, well, perfect. We had some of the best ceviche that we’ve ever tasted. Their menu has 8 ceviches, so we have at least 7 more return visits to this restaurant. (Here’s one of their recipes for ceviche.)
* The Grove (2016 Fillmore/California) - coffeeshop atmosphere with some good $8 hot-pressed sandwiches; it’s hard to get a table here on sunny weekends.
* The Elite Cafe (2049 Fillmore/California) - unique jambalaya with smoked duck; it was almost like being in N’Awlin’s, but the prices could give you a stomach ache.
Haight Ashbury/Cole Valley:
* Magnolia’s Brewery (1398 Haight/Masonic) - Grateful Dead decorated pub serving some excellent beers, served with phoofy Californian food: Niman Ranch hamburger on a rosemary focaccia bun, free-range buffalo wings, that sort of thing.
* Eos Restaurant and Wine Bar (901 Cole) - small plates have replaced their large entrees on the menu, so you can split three plates between two of you and still come out cheaper than their old menu; we’ve had some fantastic items there, even when they sounded extremely strange, the result was usually strangely satisfying.
Marina:
* A16 - a fine rendition of Naples pizza; the crowd is definitely Marina locals, all in black wool coats, high heel pant outfits and lots of makeup fresh from the gym, but, hey, the pizza is good.
Okay, so we’ve been eating out a bit lately…
