I began my recap of the 2023 version of this post by noting that we had been literally all over the map that year. Well, in 2024 we did not go to Europe at all (unless you count layovers in airports) but we/I spent even more time outside the United States. Our year began with an off-campus program: I took a bunch of students to Bombay for five weeks before we moved to Seoul for another five weeks. As you might imagine, we ate out a lot in both cities and ate a lot of fantastic food in both cities. On the way back to Minnesota from Seoul we stopped in Delhi for two weeks and ate out quite a bit there too. Then in May I was in New York/New Jersey by myself for a few days before the whole family did a trip to Southern and Northern California together in the second half of June. A long break from travel followed after that till I went off by myself again, this time for two weeks and to Delhi. In between we ate out at our usual weekly clip in the Twin Cities metro. And so there’s a lot of geography to draw on for this year’s top 10 list as well. As I did last year, I’ve tried to manage things a bit by separating more expensive/formal restaurants from more casual places into distinct top 10 lists. This year, however, I’m not doing an overall top 5 list that draws from both; instead each list is ranked rather than presented in chronological order. Continue reading
Category Archives: San Francisco
City View (San Francisco, June 2024)
Okay, it’s time to put the San Francisco trip reports to bed. As I think I mentioned before, a full half of our meals in the city involved Chinese food. Only one of these meals was planned: dim sum at Yank Sing on our first full day. Our brunch/lunch at 606 came about mostly because our evolving plans put us right by it on the second day. On the third day we started out with a visit to Alcatraz Island (highly recommended) and the original plan had been to eat at Hog Island Oyster Co. in the Ferry Building right after. But as the older boy had not been able to enjoy dim sum at Yank Sing (on account of a blessedly mild and brief bout of food poisoning), he asked if we could go eat a full-on dim sum meal again. And so we ended up at City View at Walter U. Lum Place. Continue reading
Del Popolo (San Francisco, June 2024)
Staying in San Francisco, here is a quick write-up of the dinner we had after a hike through Muir Woods after a visit to Rancho Gordo in Napa after lunch at 606 in Chinatown. San Francisco has no shortage of strong options for pizza and if you ask people in the know for short lists of recommendations you’ll likely get lists with quite a bit of variation on them. Del Popolo, where we ate, is unlikely to show up on many of those lists. Why did we eat there anyway? Well, it’s primary virtue as far as we were concerned is that it is located a hop, skip and jump from our hotel on the edge of Union Square and it would be a quick walk there and back after what was scheduled to be a long day. That part of the promise was kept. The pizza was not bad either. Here are some details. Continue reading
606 (San Francisco, June 2024)
Our second full day in San Francisco was also a busy one but thankfully it began with the older boy completely recovered from the mild food poisoning he’d suffered the previous day. This had kept him out of our excellent dinner at Copra the previous night and had also meant he could not enjoy our dim sum lunch at Yank Sing—at the beginning of which is when the symptoms first hit him. And so he asked if we could eat some dumplings for lunch on this day as well. This worked well with our plans. We were due at the Rancho Gordo mothership in Napa in the afternoon but had been planning already to take the boys to Chinatown and City Lights in the morning. I cast around for well-reviewed purveyors of dumplings in the relative vicinity of City Lights and 606 was right there. It turned out to be a solid choice. Continue reading
Copra (San Francisco, June 2024)
Let’s keep the San Francisco meal reports moving. When last seen in the city, we were eating dim sum at Yank Sing in the Rincon Center—this after dinner the previous night at State Bird Provisions. I said in my write-up of said dinner at State Bird Provisions that we ate an even better meal the next day at a restaurant not too far away from it. That restaurant is Copra, from a chef with a long history of serving high-end Indian food in the Bay Area. Sri Gopinathan made his name at Taj Campton Place where he spent 15 years and earned two Michelin stars. He left that restaurant in 2020 and opened Copra on Fillmore St. in Japantown in early 2023—he also has another restaurant, Ettan in Palo Alto. I had wanted to eat at Campton Place in its heyday but a trip to San Francisco never materialized. And so it was a done deal that we would eat at Copra on this trip. And I am very glad we did. Halfway into the missus and I looked at each other and wondered when the let-down was going to arrive. It never did. This is, hands down, the best Indian restaurant we’ve eaten at in the United States. Here are the details. Continue reading
Yank Sing (San Francisco, June 2024)
On schedule for once, here is my second meal report from our brief visit to San Francisco in mid-June. We’d arrived the previous evening (when we had dinner at State Bird Provisions). Our first full day started in Berkeley, on the campus of UC Berkeley, to be exact, walking the missus’ undergraduate haunts with the boys. From there we returned to San Francisco for lunch. Dim sum was what we were after. The best dim sum in the Bay Area is said to be in the suburbs, not in San Francisco proper but it seemed unlikely we’d be driving to the suburbs just to eat. Luckily, there’s very good dim sum in the city as well and if you ask for recommendations from local foodies, the venerable Yank Sing is likely to be on most people’s lists. There are two locations; we went to the one on Spear St., in the Rincon Center. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
State Bird Provisions (San Francisco, June 2024)
I had hoped to get my meal reports from our California trip in June done by the end of August; but that plan has gone the way of all my previous plans this year. The new goal is to get them all done by the end of September. This is totally going to happen!
When last seen in California, we were eating Cal-Mexican food at Mi Casa in Morro Bay. The next day we abandoned the Central Coast and drove north on the 101 to San Francisco. Our first meal after arrival was at State Bird Provisions in the Fillmore District. Here’s how it went. Continue reading