The hardest restaurant question is not which is best, it is which one tonight, at seven, with these people, from here. San Francisco has several thousand restaurants and the search interfaces are all built to rank them rather than to eliminate them, which is the wrong operation. What actually resolves this is five questions in order, each of which removes most of the remaining options.
Five questions eliminate several thousand restaurants down to one. Ask Karpo to run them against what is actually open near you tonight.
Question one: can you get a table, or are you walking in
This is first because it is binary and it removes the most options. If it is after five and you have no booking on a Friday or Saturday, the entire category of restaurants that requires one is gone and no amount of wanting it will change that.
What remains is genuinely large: counters, taquerias, pizzerias, Chinatown and Richmond dining rooms, market halls, and a surprising number of good restaurants that keep bar seats for walk-ins. In San Francisco the bar seat is the most underused resource in the city — many rooms that show nothing online will seat two people at the bar within twenty minutes.
Question two: how long do you have
Under thirty minutes eliminates every full-service restaurant, and that is fine, because the fast formats here are excellent: taquerias, banh mi counters on Larkin Street, dumpling windows in Chinatown and along Clement Street, slice windows in North Beach. Thirty to ninety minutes is a normal dinner. Ninety minutes or more opens up tasting menus and the rooms where the meal is the evening.
The mistake is booking a two-hour restaurant for a ninety-minute evening, which produces a rushed meal and an unhappy table. Match the format to the time you actually have.
Question three: how many people
Two is easy and everything is available, including counters, which are frequently the best seats in a busy room. Three or four is still straightforward. Six and above changes everything: you are now a large party, which means a different table, sometimes a set menu and often a deposit, and the platforms will show you almost nothing.
At six or more, phone rather than book online, and lean toward the formats built for it — Chinatown banquet rooms with round tables, the older North Beach Italian-American dining rooms, and the market halls where a group can split across counters and still sit together.
Question four: what are you spending
Be honest about this before you look rather than after. Under twenty dollars a head is a counter or a taqueria and there are excellent ones. Twenty to fifty is the largest and best category in San Francisco — neighbourhood restaurants doing serious cooking without a tasting menu. Fifty to a hundred is a proper night out. Above that, you are booking weeks ahead and this decision tree does not apply.
Remember to include the additions: many San Francisco restaurants now apply a service charge of around twenty percent, several itemise a healthcare surcharge, and tax is on top. A menu that reads as fifty dollars a head frequently lands closer to seventy.
Question five: which neighbourhood, and how are you getting there
This is last but it frequently overrides everything above it, because in San Francisco the parking decides the evening. The Mission, North Beach and the Marina are hard to park in on a weekend; Hayes Valley, Dogpatch and the Divisadero corridor are easier; and anywhere near a BART or Muni Metro station is easiest of all. If your group is arriving from different directions, pick the neighbourhood with the transit before you pick the restaurant.
Run those five and you will usually be left with two or three options rather than a list of four hundred, at which point the choice is easy and, importantly, defensible to everyone else at the table.
The tiebreaker when two options survive
If the five questions leave you with two candidates, the tiebreaker that works best is which one you would be happy to end the evening at. San Francisco's kitchens mostly stop around nine, so a restaurant in a neighbourhood with nothing else around it means the evening ends when the meal does. A restaurant in the Mission, North Beach or Hayes Valley means the evening can continue with a two-minute walk. Unless the food is the entire point, take the one with somewhere to go afterwards — it is the difference between dinner and a night out, and it costs nothing to factor in at the point of deciding.
Practical notes
Five questions in order: can you get a table or are you walking in; how long do you have; how many people; what is the budget per head; and which neighbourhood and how are you getting there. Walk-in formats: taquerias, banh mi counters on Larkin St, dumpling windows in Chinatown and along Clement St, slice windows in North Beach, market halls, and bar seats at full-service restaurants, which are the most underused resource in the city. Under 30 minutes rules out full service; 30 to 90 is a normal dinner; over 90 opens tasting menus. At six or more people, phone rather than book online and lean toward Chinatown banquet rooms, older North Beach dining rooms or market halls. Budget: under $20 a head at counters, $20 to $50 for the largest and best category, $50 to $100 for a night out; add roughly 20 percent service, any healthcare surcharge and tax. Parking is hard in the Mission, North Beach and the Marina, easier in Hayes Valley, Dogpatch and along Divisadero.
Tags: #RestaurantNearMe #SanFrancisco #DinnerTonight #WalkIns #BarSeats #MissionDistrict #NorthBeach #HayesValley #Dogpatch #ClementStreet #SFEats #QuickDinner #Budget #Reservations
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The question is never which restaurant is best, it is which one works tonight from where you are. Ask Karpo to narrow it by what is open, what has a table, how long you have and how everyone is getting there.
