Frankly, I'm not so impressed with Chinese food in San Francisco.

Update - my friend is here for the weekend (she lives in Memphis) and we just made reservations for a late lunch at Slanted Door! The menu looks great - plenty of somewhat "adventurous" dishes but also plenty of chicken and beef. :) It'd be great if we had that view at night, but our choices were 5:15 or 9:30, and we had a split vote on which we'd prefer, so we went for lunch instead.

I think we'd be open to one more semi-expensive meal, so I'm going to keep checking out all these suggestions (and any more that y'all have). I'm definitely going to check out the Dine About Town specials - thank you for that, newtome!

The Slanted Door is an excellent choice.
The food and service are wonderful and I had one of their cocktails with elderberry that was divine.
Enjoy the trip :)

The daikon rice cakes at TSD are fabulous. So is the chicken claypot.

Lunch at TSD is a great choice. You get about the same menu as dinner but at a lesser price (and at a lesser serving). Good taste without the surprises in Asian food that you were trying to avoid.

Here's the San Francisco Dine About Town list of participating restaurants:

http://www.sanfrancisco.travel/dine/dine-about-town/

For $19 per person for lunch you can't go wrong with tasting a few of these restaurants!

I'd suggest:

Campton Place

La Mar Cebicheria Peruana

Waterbar (just to make Stu happy! :) )

Dinner is at $36 per person, so I'll let the others suggest what they think would be the best for you for dinner.

Happy dining in SF! Sounds like a great trip in the making!

sf307, we also just went to Coqueta for lunch. So excited to be at a trendy restaurant soon after it opens! It is more of an "adventurous" eating experience though. Their food was marvelous, but it helps if you're willing to try new things.

Dine Around Town - dinner at any of these:

Plouf
E Tutto Qua
Spruce
One Market

>>Waterbar (just to make Stu happy!<<

Actually, I'm not a fan of Waterbar. We've dined there twice.

We had dinner at Waterfront Restaurant on Thursday - on the "other" side of the Ferry Bldg from Waterbar. The last time I dined at Waterfront was when it first opened around '76.

Stu Dudley

Thanks so much for the affirmation and additional suggestions - this trip has snuck up on me, and I'm getting very excited about it looking at these restaurant choices! Dine About Town looks like a great option - thanks so much to all of you for the specific recommendations. That list is huge!

Monica, we hadn't even heard of it! We were out for a walk, and looking for someplace to eat and just happened upon it. Lucky us.

It just occurred to me, I'd choose Cotogna for a semi-splurge. I've never had a bad meal there.

http://www.cotognasf.com/

We're eating at Cotogna for our first time next Monday. Can't wait. sf7307? Any recommendations or favorites?

I've not had the same thing twice!

<I>Hey jent,
Do you know about this?
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...eets-Nashville
Thought you may be interested.

</I>back to San Francisco...

Ooooh, starrs, that sounds familiar but I didn't know any details! Thank you! Just followed them on Twitter. I missed them near work last week - hopefully they'll swing by again soon!

sf7307, Cotogna's menu looks fantastic! Unfortunately there are no spots for a reservation while we're there except a 9:30pm Thursday night (and I don't think that time would fly with my friend - she's typically an early eater). Do you know if they take many walk-ins?

The menu at Chapeau! looks delicious too... and I'm keeping Coqueta on the list, since it sounds like somewhere we might be able to stop in for a drink and a light meal.

Hmm. Just checked Yelp for Cotogna, and it sounds like we might be out of luck without a reservation.

I've actually only been to Cotogna for lunch - I keep meaning the reserve ahead for dinner, but I tend not to do that (for anyplace, even though I know I miss out on a lot of good restaurants because of my inability and lack of desire to plan in advance :-) )

Haha - sf, you sound like my friend! I think we really just have one lunch flexible right now, unless we stay in the city longer than I was thinking we might on Saturday before we leave for Carmel. We're thinking about taking the "Tastes & Tales of North Beach" tour with SF City Guides Wednesday morning, so that might put us at a good spot to try Cotogna.

trippinkpj - Thanks for the reference to Bistro Central Parc.

It's started by the same person that owns Baker Street Bistro.

Baker Street is a place where you can't go wrong with the food, at reasonable prices.

Looking forward to visiting Bistro Central Parc.