Taj Campton, San Francisco

With a title like this “San Francisco is obsessed with food and that is an understatement,” how can you not read the article? This was not published in a local San Francisco bay area paper, but in the Washington Post (WaPo) and it brought back memories of a conversation I had with a chef in Manhattan. This chef worked in a Michelin rated restaurant and was totally taken aback when I mentioned that on average I had access to better food in San Francisco Bay area when compared to Manhattan. He, of course, disagreed with my point of view and made a case on why Manhattan was “the place” for food lovers.  I digressed, Back to the WaPo article.

Tom Sietsema captures San Francisco Bay area’s obsession with food in his WaPo article.He begins and ends his culinary journey with the airport that offers an interesteting selection of food, which I am sad to report is not the case with the airports in New York city when I was last there.

Sietsema mentions a mix of well-known restaurants, cafe and the shops in Ferry Building in San Francisco and a couple in Berkeley and Alameda area. It would have been nice if he had included places in the Mission, Sunset and Richmond districts.  All these places have some hidden gems and some of them are reasonably priced.

Besides the restaurants and food trucks, the various farmers markets are responsible for fueling or rekindling our interest in food for folks in the bay area. This constant and reliable supply of fresh fruits and vegetables through out the year has spoilt us all quite a bit, which might also explain our obsession with food. Oh! I forgot our obsession with artisanal bread and baked goods.

By the way, if you just have a few hours in San Francisco you may want to head to the bottom of Market Street and into the Ferry Building , where you will discover a cornucopia of sorts of food. This is where you will find Blue Bottle Coffee, Acme Bread, Cowgirl Creamery, Straus Ice Cream, Humphry Slocombe and much, much more.

Take a look at the bounty that we see in our local farmer’s market in the Bay area.