SF Chronicle Tells You to Bite on This

The San Francisco Chronicle today published their annual list of the top 100 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 2 Castro eateries made the cut:  Mecca and Chow.  San Francisco has always had a reputation for having some of the top restaurants in the country, and the fact that this list covers a wide swath of land from Healdsburg in the north to Los Gatos down south out to Walnut Creek in the east bay makes the top 100 an even more exclusive club to join.

Mecca, a posh bar/restaurant on Market, conveniently located a couple of doors down from Eros, is an understandable candidate for the top 100 list.  The couple of times we have been there the food has been thoughtfully presented, varied and interesting, and most importantly, tasty.  And the space itself is modern and stylish, attracting a young, attractive crowd to the bar which takes up the center of the room.  The biggest drawback is that because of the barful of young, attractive gays and straights dominating the center of the space, the restaurant is possibly one of the loudest spots on the face of the earth.

Chow is more of a head-scratcher.  It's a fine enough restaurant, and for me it is a go-to spot for meeting people for lunch.  It's right next to the Church MUNI stop, across the street from the huge Safeway parking lot, reasonably priced, and has a menu filled with fairly standard items.  But is it really one of the top 100 in the Bar Area?  In the Castro alone, I would rank it next to Luna and Nirvana among mid-priced restaurants, and I would put it behind the more high-end Catch and 2223.  Any big Chow fans out there who can explain to me why it makes this list every year?  What am I missing?

Overall, it's disappointing that the Castro doesn't have more restaurants on the list.  For the long term health of the neighborhood, I think it would be good to bolster our reputation for something other than the whole gay thing, and good restaurants and bars are an area where we would have a good shot.  I don't know what the city or the MUMC could do to encourage quality dining per se, but it is something to think about.