day 1: arrive after lunch. dinner is booked at state bird provisions.
day 2: lunch unplanned. dinner is booked at copra.
day 3: lunch unplanned. dinner is free, thinking of pasta supply co. walk-in only. are waits bad on weeknights? better to try for lunch?
day 4: lunch unplanned, might hit koi palace on our way down to menlo park (where we’ll be staying with friends for a couple of nights).
lunches are currently unplanned because we are waiting to see what day we might be able to snag a tour of berkeley (it’s getting to be that time for the older boy). once that falls into place one way or the other we’ll finalize the plans for the other days and figure out lunch accordingly. but we’re thinking probably yank sing one day and hog island oyster co. another day. if we do pasta supply co. for lunch the third day then maybe pizza for dinner (where?).
currently planning to walk to and back from state bird provisions and copra from the hotel. unless someone tells me that’s a bad idea with the kids.
We haven’t tried Copra yet but Indian friends found it OK but far from great (quite toned out spices etc) and they would recommend ROOH if you want to go for “higher end” Indian food in the city
Pasta Supply is more or less a small shop with a few tables which might be OK for lunch but isn’t great for dinner. We had once some of their dishes and in a city with a many good Italian restaurants you can do much better.
Walking at night along Geary or other parallel streets from both restaurants for 30-40 minutes you will come a long a few potential areas with a significant level of homelessness - those areas are often quite localized/specific (and not everywhere as news seems to often indicate) but especially around Union Square (and larger vicinity) can be a bit sketchy. I would take at least at night an Uber
i’ve eaten at baar baar in new york, whose chef opened rooh, and which is in the same vein. never again.
as for italian in san francisco–yes, i know there’s a lot better to be had than pasta supply co. but we’re traveling with our kids and casual but good italian is more appealing for the last night than the best italian there is. if there are other places–especially closer to union square–that better or equally fit that bill, please recommend.
thanks for the tip re streets/uber. we’ll actually have a car so can just drive ourselves instead.
Interesting about your experience with baar baar as ROOH is overall quite highly regarded with a lot of Indian friends.
There are quite a few not high-end Italian/pizza restaurants relatively close to Union Square (at least not further than your original choices) which would be better than Pasta Supply like Perbacco, A Mano, Fiorella (Polk), Corzetti, Flower & Water Pizzeria, Del Popolo
One thing about driving yourself to restaurants - as in many large cities also in San Francisco it can be quite challenging to get parking space (especially at night) even remotely close to restaurants in the some parts. Japantown (Copra) is not impossible but will be for example quite challenging.
as for my feelings about baar baar (which i am transferring perhaps unfairly to rooh), i’m sure a lot of indians in new york like it a lot too. personally, i usually find that kind of “progressive indian” cooking to be trying too hard. i don’t really care about spices being toned down (my own cooking is usually not overly spiced either) as long as the cooking is of a high caliber. at baar baar it’s like they put together dishes on the basis of the idea sounding cool and didn’t bother about whether they worked on the plate. take their chaat with tuna, for example. it’s not the chaat with fish that i object to per se, it’s that it was not good. on the other hand, i had the sevpuri with chilled seabass at the bombay canteen in january and that was very good.
after all this, it’ll be funny if our friends in menlo park drag us to the branch of rooh in palo alto…
Cotogna’s great. So far as I know the best Cal-Italian in town. Open for lunch Wed.-Sat.
For an only in SF meal, Sam’s Grill. It’s what the more famous Tadich Grill would be if they cared more about the food. Still has real San Francisco sourdough like from when I was a kid (supposedly a special extra-sour order from Boudin). Lunch and dinner Mon.-Fri.
Or the local style of Italian-American at Original Joe’s. Lunch Fri.-Sun. only.
The route from Union Square to State Bird or Copra is not the nicest walk in town. Very heavy traffic. Geary west of Van Ness is like a freeway. I’d pick a more scenic walk and then take an Uber or bus to dinner. Maybe walk up to Huntington Park and down to North Beach, then catch the 45 bus over the hill.
booked corzetti for dinner as it turned out to be a hop, skip and jump from the hotel and that might be a long day. will keep the other recs in mind for lunch possibilities (especially flour+water pizzeria and sam’s grill).
I never heard of Corzetti before but it’s an Adriano Paganini place. Very successful local restaurateur, pretty reliable for moderately priced neighborhood Italian (Beretta, Dellarosa, A Mano), among other things. Weird to Google an Italian restaurant and have the menu snippet that shows up be “side of bacon”! (It’s a hotel restaurant so serves American breakfast.)
