San Francisco Food and Drinks

An interest in thinking about food and drinks is a combination of: creativity, flavor, vibe, and shared enjoyment w/company

I loaded as many restaurants/bars as I could find recommended/mentioned onto a map via Corner. Helpful in seeing where places are and further cultivating down a list of places that look more interesting

https://www.corner.inc/vishalsethi01

In thinking about food/drinks/restaurants, a combination of below may help me think about them:

• using the app Corner to sort/map
• thinking about different criteria of each place before you go, such as
  • google and yelp ratings
  • friends/general word of mouth sentiment
• thinking about the place itself, in particular the details outside of the food and drinks themselves
  • how is the layout arranged
    • does the restaurant fit in suboptimally positioned tables to increasing seating capacity)
    • can people get in and out of their seat easily
    • can staff navigate between the tables easily; what about tables farthest away from the kitchen
  • how is the sound level
    • is it too loud, too quiet, or just right; how much does that vary by low to high occupancy
  • do you, any company you may be with, and other people feel comfortable in the restaurant
• how seamless is the entire experience when thinking of friction
• DISCLAIMER: I know many restaurants do not prioritize the criteria mentioned above, and at those places, it is not appropriate to judge them on that which does not matter/is not that place’s focus, but I could also argue that small things do matter because it does comprise the entire experience

That’s how I curate. I collect a lot of data points and then I decide with some tilt toward trying new places and hope for the best.
Generally I favor trying new places, and most people residing in metropolitian areas may find a high density of restaurants.
However I think this exercise is rather interesting because:

• Say you assume all restaurants in your area fall on a bell curve; when randomly selected, your experience will be average
• I wrote about this in an old blog post about how I think having good taste isn’t natural and isn’t common, so if you collect 10 opinions, it is possible that the most popular opinion maybe isn’t the most accurate opinion for you (this statement feels pretty weird).
• Opinions are obviously nuanced/biased and judging very objectively how things are, I think is difficult

Let me come back to this later

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Published on April 6, 2024.

Tagged: Personal