SAN FRANCISCO— I am in one of the top five restaurant cities in the country. I was supposed to have a full day here. I plan my trips around restaurants. Some folks might schedule the theatre, some a sporting event, others a museum. I like all of those things, and I plan for all of those activities when traveling, but they all come in a distant second to food. Especially when I’m in a food city as great as San Francisco.

I begin planning weeks before I travel. If it’s a city I’ve already visited, I usually have a list of favorites that I have dined in before, mixed with a long list of to-be-visited restaurants I have been planning the jaunt to the West Coast for months.

When visiting New York, my entire schedule revolves around restaurant reservations. Here in San Francisco, I was only going to be here for one day and had a full day of dining planned. My flight was to arrive at 11:30 a.m., giving me two meal periods. It’s tough to whittle down a long list of San Francisco favorites and hope-to-visits to only two, but I was going to have fun trying.

I planned on spending one of my meals in Chinatown, and the other at one of three restaurants on a much-anticipated list of potential dining spots I have been studying over for weeks.

I didn’t have reservations, but these days, I have had good luck without them. I am in it for the food. I don’t mind eating early, and I don’t mind sitting at the table next to the kitchen door. When I’m dining alone, as I was planning on doing on this trip, I would sit at the bar.

I love eating at the bar of a fine-dining restaurant. I don’t drink, but I eat a lot. At the bar of a fine dining restaurant, I find the service is usually more efficient, more personal, and I don’t need a reservation. The last time I was in San Francisco, I walked in to restaurant Gary Danko and was immediately seated at the bar. The resulting meal was one of my culinary highlights that year.

I had this trip mapped out for maximum dining impact.

Instead, I am typing from my hotel room after a quick, late-night trip into Chinatown to eat at The House of Nanking. I have spent the last 16 hours in airports and on airplanes as my non-stop direct flight turned into a series of delays and layovers taking me from Hattiesburg to the City By the Bay by way of Minneapolis. One meal out of two is not too bad considering the circumstances.

Tomorrow I will travel north and deep into the redwood forests along the Russian River where I will join a group of friends only to surface for one evening to eat at The French Laundry.

Opera fans have the Metropolitan Opera House, surfers go to Maui, golfers take a pilgrimage to Augusta for the Masters. For me, my personal culinary Mecca is The French Laundry. It’s a restaurant that is surely worth several days of 16-hour flights and cold room service food.



Robert St.John is an author, chef, restaurateur, and world-class eater. He is the author of seven books including the newly released New South Grilling. He can be reached at www.robertstjohn.com