Moved to San Francisco Bay area, need suggestions!

Someone wrote:

[...]

>You know, Dave, I read this group because I'm going to spend some time
>in San Fran and love good food.
>It's not that I don't appreciate being warned about a place that's not
>as good as it used to be bUT:
>In your entire post, everything sucked.
>Don't you think you ought to finish off with a couple of GOOD ones?
>Or do you hate everything?
>Please, where IS the good seafood?

I didn't say everything sucked. But I am seeing tourist joints being touted as good.

Obviously, the best seafood is in yoru own kitchen if you go to a good seafood market. Live dungeness crab, popped in a pot of boiling water...

Most of the better SF area restaurants do seafood pretty well. We've even had excellent seafood at Upstairs at Cliff House. And we're partial to the Shorebird down in Princeton. It's a bit of a drive, but the drive and Princeton are well worth it even without a restaurant destination. OTOH, I suspect that the extremely pleasant ambience at the Shorebird makes the food taste a bit better than it might actually be.

Pacific Cafe is good, but not as good as some tout it. The free wine while waiting for a table helps the food taste better. I've heard the seafood restaurant right across Geary is just as good, without the wait, but I dunno.

We need to go back to PJ's; it's been too long, but our memory is that it's good.

In this area, ethnic restaurants are also prime choices for seafood. For instance, our very favoriter restaurant of all, regardless of type, is a Japanese place called Mitsu in Pacifica. The seafood used in the sushi is superb and all of the dishes, even seafood-related, are fantastic. Not cheap, by the way, and it takes quite a while to get your food, since Sasha is back there doing it all to order. (I knwo tomago gets a lot of put-downs, but she makes a really good tomago.)

Because of our situation caring for medically fragile foster babies my wife and I don't get out to good restaurants near as often as we'd like, and that just makes the restaurants that don't live up to their reputation that much more disappointing.