I've spent so much time in San Francisco I might as well live there.
Thre are just too many really good restaurants to be able to hit even the majority of them in one trip. I still haven't hit all the ones I want to try. I'll give you some highlights and you can decide if you want to try any or all of them on this trip.
Breakfast: Dotties, and the newly reopened Sears Fine Foods will both be close to your hotel. Anyone that works in the hotel can direct you.
Lunch: Zuni Cafe and Fog City Diner. If you find yourself at Fisherman's Wharf at lunch time,
Boudin Bakery has great lunches at reasonable prices, including clam chowder, soup, or chili in a sourdough bread bowl. They have a walk up booth at one end of Fisherman's Wharf and a sit down restaurant more towards the middle, in a small strip mall, upstairs from their actual bakery. I recommend the sitdown. Be sure to go back there just before you leave to get some baked goods to take home with you.
Dinner: Within walking distance of your hotel would be Original Joes, an Italian place in the Tenderloin district and a mainstay in San Francisco, or on the Embarcadero, near the baseball stadium, is a place called DeLancy Street Bistro that has excellent food, reasonable prices, and valet parking if you are crazy enough to have a car in San Francisco.
In Chinatown, you just HAVE to go to Sam Wo, on Washington Street off of Grant, just once, to experience it. Otherwise, The Golden Dragon, which is directly across the street from Sam Wo, has excellent food at reasonable prices (they all have reasonable prices. It's Chinatown!) plus a bit of
HISTORY to it, and the Grand Palace Restaurant in the 900 block of Grant has the best Dim Sum in Chinatown. They even have a big banner across the sidewalk proclaiming it!
On Ghirardeli Square is
ANA MANDARA, a high end Vietnamese restaurant that I can't recommend highly enough for the quality of their food, excellent service and Hollywood movie set ambience. Co-owned by Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, and the restaurant's Executive Chef Khai Duong, who is Cordon Bleu de Paris trained, this palce served me, by far, the best meal I ever had in San Francisco that I didn't cook myself.
Now, if you want a night of excitement and entertainment that you can't get anywhere else, Call now and get reservations at
ASIA SF!, a restaurant/Nightclub that is pure San Francisco.
Well, I could go on and on, but this will give you a sampling of a foodies trip through SF. I plan my restaurants just like I would a trip to Alcatraz or a boat ride under the Golden Gate Bridge. BTW, you can go on line and buy advance tickets for Alcatraz, and I recommend the night tour over the day tour, but dress REALLY warm! It gets colder than a well digger's belt buckle out there at night.
Have a fantastic trip! I can't wait to go back again, and again, and again.
ETA: If you are going to be there over a week-end, be sure to sign up for the
CHINATOWN GHOST TOUR