Bay Area Restaurants

Before we leave the Bay Area, my wife and I are trying to get a few items crossed off our "things to do before we leave the bay area" list. One of the major items we want to get through is to visit several bay area restaurants that we enjoy or think we'd enjoy.


So, we started off our restaurant trips a couple weeks ago, with our first vist to Limón, a great Peruvian restaurant in the Mission district of San Francisco. We heard about it a year ago, and have run into a couple raving reviews since, and decided we finally had to make the time to go. We enjoyed their chicha morada and sangria, my wife had a great saltado de pollo, and I had a yummy arroz con mariscos. We were with a group, so were able to taste a good set of appetizers and desserts. Everything was delicious, and the service was impeccable.

Last week we had dinner at Taste Paul K, a self-described "edgy mediterranean" restaurant in Hayes Valley. The food was great. We ordered the mezze platter as an appetizer; the lamb riblets that came in the platter had been marinated with pomegranate syrup and just melted in one's mouth. I had the pressed sumac chicken, and my wife had their pan roasted halibut. It's definitely not your standard mediterranean food, and its quite well done.

For a year now, we've been frequenting a Chef Chu's whenever we're in the mood for chinese food. The restaurant has been around since 1970, and is in my opinion, the best chinese restaurant in the Bay Area¹. The sauces are the best I've tasted. We had lunch there a few days ago, and I'm sure we'll want to go again within the next four weeks.

I'm sure we'll go to several more restaurants before we leave, though we haven't planned anything in particular. However, we have chosen our first "we've left California" restaurant. On the drive up from San Francisco to Seattle, we're going to spend a night in Ashland, OR, just north of the California-Oregon border. There, we have reservations at Amuse, a Northwest/French restaurant with a tasty looking menu.

[1] The Great China in Berkeley comes in second.