San Francisco restaurant recommendations
 

We are driving up from Santa Cruz for a night in the city this weekend - going to see the Chihuly exhibit at the DeYoung - and will be spending the night over Saturday.

Looking for ideas as to a nice - but not exhorbitant cost - restaurant. We like just about anything - Italian is good (gnocchi - yum!), seafood, or Calif cuisine.

Anybody have a recommendation? We will have our car with us, so it doesn't need to be super easy to access, and we would prefer not a tourist trap.

Thanks!

Perbaccos...
Not too exorbitant.

See if they can give you the gnocchi with their 5 hr pork sugo.
http://www.perbaccosf.com/menus/store/dinner.pdf

Kal, thank you for the idea, but the restaurant you suggested is a bit over our planned budget.

Any other ideas?

SPQR - excellent food, no reservations (but a nice neighborhood to walk around while you're waiting). The place is very small, very crowded. There's a nice wine bar across the street, too.

Oops, here's a link:

http://www.spqrsf.com/

Caesar's near Fish Wharf.
Old time Tuscan.
Get the 7 course meal and vino della casa.

http://caesars.citysearch.com/

I'm sure they will throw meat sauce on the gnocchi.

SQPR is on our to do list since it's a "relative" of our fave A16.
http://www.a16sf.com/home.html

Zuni Cafe. On Market and about 16th. Great food, reservation needed. Try opentable.com

http://www.zunicafe.com/


Roast Chicken with Bread Salad - heavenly!

Deb

L'Osteria del Forno in North Beach

Delfinas

(I believe both are reviewed in the Fodors Restaurant section)

Both are wonderful and reasonably priced.

Speaking of Delfina....

Their next-door pizzeria is more casual and doesn't need (indeed they don't take) reservations. If you go in the hours between the lunch and dinner rushes, there's not much of a wait at all - just write your name on the chalkboard. There's some outdoor seating and primo people-watching. Went last Saturday at about 2:30 p.m., waited about 15 minutes for our sidewalk table. Had fresh sardines prepared Sicilian-style for an app, then the pizza with proscuitto, arugula and buffalo mozarella.
As you can see from the menu, there's far more available than the usual pizza parlour:

http://www.pizzeriadelfina.com/index.html

Down the street from Delfina is the famous Tartine Bakery and just across the street is the Bi-Rite Creamery with its irresistable selection of hand-crafted ice creams. Both good places to have dessert after your lunch.

Ottimista Enoteca had wonderful food the last time we visited including an excellent pork sugo...
www.ottimistasf.com

Perbacco is alson one of our Favorites along with A16...

By the way with regards to Perbacco you can order 2 different sized portions of pasta (dinner and starter size) so we often will just order 3 different starter sizes of various pastas and then share between the 2 of us for a complete meal at around $50.