Item — HN Reader

I'm Italian and I think I know something about good food: trust me, there are only exceptions in San Francisco. Most food is crap, or just average. And ALWAYS overpriced.

Take the "trendy" places: Flour + Water, Farina, Cocina, etc. If you go there, you will hear Americans shouting "Sooo good! Delicious! Amazing! Soo tasty!", etc.

Reality is that if you take any random restaurant or trattoria in Rome, chances are you will eat something AMAZINGLY superior, for 1/3 or 1/4 of the cost. (then there are some tourist traps, and they don't count, of course. They're just a scam).

My 0.02.

3 comments

It would be quite surprising if Italian restaurants in SF would be better than Italian restaurants in Italy.

I'm not a restaurant / food expert, but found that food is most of the time average, sometimes great, sometimes crap, around the world (in Rome, Tuscany, Paris, Germany, Nordics, Asia, US). Depends where you go, what you order and what are your reference points (culturally or taste wise).

What I think the point of the article is that, denser and well earning cities can offer more average _and_ premium choices.

(And Americans, specially in California, always say that the everything is awesome, delicious etc :)

If anyone thinks they can get good Italian food on the west coast of America...Asian food in SF is much better and affordable. Pita curry wraps for a $6 lunch? Damn, that's innovation.

The same can be said for basically any country and it's native cuisine. E.g. sushi in Japan.

That said, in my experience the US does other countries' cuisines better than most. By that I mean Italian food in the US is much better than Italian food in Japan.

Given America's large immigrant population and tradition, you'd expect it would in many cases do rather well at foreign cuisines. Despite this, however, in my experience the average Japanese "Italian" restaurant is a much better bet for getting good food (even if not necessarily all that close to what they might serve in Italy) than the average American "Italian" restaurant, because unfortunately, the latter often really, really, suck at the basic "edible product" level...

What is the average "Italian" restaurant, and why would you ever eat at it? zagat.com and stick to 23+ rating restaurants.