A Restaurant Disneyland

San Francisco could probably be best described as a restaurant Disneyland. It's a cosy, picturesque city in which many of the residents vacate the city limits for their high-paying jobs in Silicon Valley and return in the evening to compete for precious parking spaces and stuff their faces at any of the thousands of local restaurants. The choice is endless. More so than just about anywhere else in the world, the ratio of eating establishments to the total population in San Francisco seems to be extraordinarily high. It's nearly impossible to walk more than two street blocks without coming across either a taqueria, a burger joint, a pupuseria, a noodle house or a cafe. Moreover most of the places serve food that's more than kind of decent. Much of it is excellent. In need of some spirited debate? Corner a San Francisco resident for a few minutes and start peppering him or her with questions about which taqueria is the best. For added fun take a position on one of them, any one, and hold to it. Your sparring partner will probably dive deep into a lengthy discussion on exactly what type of carne asada constitutes the perfect burrito, and what proportion of beans to rice to salsa produces the perfect wrap. It's an art, a science and a passion. This is the city of good eating.

Burritos and tacos aside, it's not just the lower end of the restaurant scale that gets all the attention in this city; the mid-range restaurants are also of a high standard. Compared with somewhere like New York City, there's probably fewer genuine fine dining restaurants, but that sits well with me. Who but the most obnoxiously rich amongst us can really afford to spend $180 per person on a meal on a routine basis? Where I think New York lacks is in the middle order. The world's best pizza is available in abundance, but when it comes to a finding tasty plate of something-or-other pork loin on a bed of God-knows-what with a who-gives-a-shit reduction, all for about $40 a head (booze extra), San Francisco has the world beaten.

And the good part is that most of these places are right around the corner. Just around the bend from my place on the corner of Mission and Valencia lies Blue Plate. Falling squarely into that mid-range, they dish up American comfort food with a seriously trendy bent. This is Mission fare, so the wait staff are hipster fashion plates and the decoration a showcase for whatever art movement is currently the buzz amongst everyone cooler that you or me, but the service is usually first rate and the food outstanding. I've probably eaten there six or so times and nothing has ever gone awry. Until Tuesday.

Bookings are essential, so the Great Organiser and I had a slot set for 7:45. We were on time, even a little early. Seating was prompt and within a few minutes of our arrival we found ourselves at a table near the back of the restaurant.

This is actually worthy of some further consideration. In Blue Plate terms "back" is a relative concept. The restaurant is in fact a former residence. At some stage in its not too distant past it was a home for either one or many families. As you make your way through the place it's easy to determine exactly which part of the former house is being used for what. In our case we were sitting in what was probably once a rear lounge area or perhaps even a laundry with an entrance to the back yard. And yes, they seat people out there too under those large umbrella-style gas heaters. The back door was wide open for the convenience of the service staff and that's how they got their first ever black mark from me.

As the sun sets in San Francisco the fog comes rolling in, and accompanying the fog there's always a stiff, cool breeze. Often it's more than a breeze and on this night the open back door was funnelling all that wind straight onto our table. The wait staff, usually extraordinarily attentive, remained somehow oblivious to the blast of cold air that was reaching into the tables of their diners. The votive candles resting on the table flickered in protest and we hoped that one would go out, signalling to anyone who cared to look that something was amiss. It never came to that and after an extended period they got wise. It probably could have happened sooner.

I'm a meat eater and I like steak. In my opinion a good steak should have plenty of pink to it. A good show of the pink ensures there's still some flavour left in there, so accordingly I ordered my rib-eye medium rare. The chefs are seasoned pros; if they can't get a steak right then they probably shouldn't be in the kitchen. When the plate arrived—it looked marvellous, a nice cross pattern seared across the face—I took the serrated knife in hand and sliced through the centre. It was overdone. Another black mark.

Setting my disappointment aside I soldiered on with the meal. Even a less than perfect dinner at Blue Plate is far from horrible. With my overdone steak nearly devoured—I have no trouble eating the stuff even when it's not done to my liking—I let my mind wander towards dessert. Taking their American comfort food theme to the sweets department, Blue Plate usually dishes up a number of variants of such things as cobblers and cakes. They're generally delicious and picking only one or two can be tough. This time around we grabbed two. As it turned out the first one we ordered, the one the Great Organiser really wanted to get stuck into, had been hoarded by the large table of business people right behind us. She was not amused. Black mark number three gets chalked on the board. The substitute dessert arrived very quickly indeed, but for some odd reason the minutes kept ticking past before there was any sign of the second. It took some prompting on my behalf to investigate the whereabouts of the second dish. Such lapses are rare for Blue Plate; it's never happened in the past for me but that didn't preclude them being awarded their fourth black mark for the night. Too bad.

So this is all lazy whining on my behalf and it makes for a pretty boring post. The point being here that Blue Plate does a great job and I love their food. I'll be going back there before too long and I expect they'll be back on their game. None of us a perfect after all, but this is a competitive restaurant city, and if you don't win far more than you lose you'll see your patrons heading down the street to that new place that everyone's talking about very, very quickly.