Delicate negotiations with the Chinese government.

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I guess one of my  new year resolutions is to try some new San Francisco restaurants.  If I sound reluctant it is only because when it it comes to San Francisco restaurants, I am an arrogant motherfucker who believes his taste to be impeccable without even trying.

The truth is that I’ve been getting lazy.  For that reason it was a rare treat to discover two new instant favorites in one weekend.  The inspiration to crawl out of my comfort zone came in the form of the San Francisco Panorama‘s “Best of the Rest,”  twenty short profiles of low key restaurants relatively unknown outside of their neighborhoods.  As soon as I saw Cordon Bleu on this list—A Vietnamese restaurant in my old neighborhood specializing in dumping gallons of meat sauce over sticky rice—I knew what they had in mind.  This sort of thing was supposed to be the promise of yelp.com, totally undelivered as far as I’m concerned (If I had the time to waste sifting for useful information amidst an endless roll call of losers looking for a place to validate their petty grievances, then I would just prefer to be reading the Craigslist casual encounters where the pictures are a lot clearer).

So I guess my resolution is to try every new place on this list.  These first two selections did not disappoint.

oax_listing

helmand_review

This list is also trustworthy.