It would take 11 years, dining out every night, to eat at every restaurant in San Francisco. The San Francisco Food Lover's Guide is your guide to 600+ restaurants and other culinary finds by the region's most respected food critic. As a restaurateur, journalist, and food critic for over 30 years, Unterman is uniquely qualified to profile the Bay Area food scene.

• Patricia Unterman's San Francisco Food Lover's Guide (4th ed. Published by Ten Speed Press. 565 pages. $18.95. ISBN: 1-58008-712-4). Available in most Bay Area bookstores. To order online, visit Ten Speed Press or Amazon.com

The Neighborhoods

The significant restaurants in every San Francisco neighborhood are described, along with 14 maps to restaurants and shops.

Chinatown, Civic Center & Hayes Valley, Embarcadero & Fisherman's Wharf, Financial District & Union Square, Lower & Upper Haight, Cole Valley, The Marina & Cow Hollow, The Mission District, Bernal Heights & the Excelsior, Noe Valley, the Castro, Diamond Heights & Upper Market, North Beach, Pacific Heights & Japantown, Polk Street, Nob Hill, Russian Hill & Van Ness Avenue, The Richmond District, South of Market, Third Street & Potrero Hill, The Sunset District, Out of Town, the East Bay, Marin County, and the Wine Country.

The Restaurant Reviews

As food critic for the SF Chronicle and the SF Examiner for more than 30 years, Patty is the ultimate insider. And she knows what she is talking about, since she runs two SF restaurants. Here's a sample.

Globe
290 Pacific Avenue (between Battery and Front), San Francisco
Tel: 415-391-4132. Open Monday through Friday 11:30 to 3 p.m.; Monday through Saturday 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., Sunday until 11:30 p.m.; light menu at the bar daily from 3 to 6 p.m.
Price: Moderate. Credit Cards: AmEx, MC, Visa.
This insouciant little Cal/Med bistro is always packed for lunch and dinner (until 1 a.m.) with people who like chef/owner Joseph Manzare's witty way with hearty favorites. He serves house-made spaghetti with tomato sauce in a deep ceramic bowl; clay pots of steamed clams, mussels, and calamari in spicy tomato broth; and bowls of frisée salad intertwined with lardons of pancetta and a lusciously runny poached egg. Somehow the rustic pottery makes all these dishes taste better. Many patrons come in especially for a huge grilled T-bone steak for two, slathered with grilled onions, sliced and presented on a pizza pedestal, accompanied with a dangerously hot ramekin of potato gratin. Others go for thin-crusted pizzas topped with mushrooms and truffle oil; or paved with wine-cured salami and a sunnyside-up egg. A Wolfgang Puck veteran before he opened Globe, Manzare picked up the clever, stylish, casual Puck vernacular and made it his own.
The red-bricked space with open kitchen, hard surfaces, and tiny service bar at the front can get roaringly noisy, but that only adds to the fun. Globe always feels like a drop-in party. I usually run into someone I know, maybe because off-duty chefs gravitate here for Manzare's hip, easy-to-eat food after a hard night's work.

Indexes. Lots of Indexes.

The San Francisco Food Lover's Guide has lots of handy indexes, so you can quickly find what you want.

Seasonal Produce Chart

The San Francisco Food Lover's Guide has a six-page list of the fresh vegetables and fruits and their best seasons. For example, recommended produce in San Francisco for the month of June:

Early Girl tomatoes (Coachella), Sweet 100 and Sungold cherry tomatoes (Capay, Winters), German butterball, French fingerling and red potatoes, pickling cucumbers (Bolinas, Fresno), Baby Blue Lake beans (Palo Alto), Romano beans (Fresno), Summer squash, Costato di Romesco, French grey squash (Bolinas), Walla Walla onions (Washington), Sea beans, or pousse pied, a seashore succulent (Oregon), Red and white fraises du bois, red and gold raspberries (Watsonville), Black raspberries (Watsonville), Ollalieberries (Stockton, Fresno), Boysenberries, loganberries (Winters, Palo Alto), Montmorency sour pie cherries (Smith Flat, Placerville), Santa Rosa plums, Firebrite and White Snow Queen nectarines, peaches, including Red Haven, Babcock, Regina, and Early O'Henry varieties (Brentwood, Fresno), Green Perlette seedless grapes (Delano), Yellow and red watermelon (Imperial Valley).

Cookware and Books

The Food Lover's Guide has reviews of 39 stores for kitchen supplies. Here's a sample.

Irving Housewares & Gifts
2200 Irving Street (at 23rd Avenue), San Francisco
Tel: 415-759-1559, Open Monday through Sunday 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Visit Irving Housewares & Gifts for sturdy, well-made kitchen equipment at decidedly non-Williams-Sonoma prices. Cooking pots with glass covers--my latest fixation--in both medium weight stainless steel and new-age non-stick materials in all sizes feed into my current cookware phase. (I like to see what's happening in a pot even when it's covered.) A long shelf of cleavers and knives hovers over a similar shelf of cutting boards made of many different materials. Woks and rice cookers, juicers and blenders, cutting and grating tools, long-handled wok utensils--fabulous for the Western kitchen as well--heavy, lidded casseroles that can go on top of the stove and in the oven, and all sorts of dishes and glassware only scratch the surface of this stores inventory.

Recipes

And of course, there's favorite recipes from a dozen or so restaurants. Here's something for the next party.

• Pineapple-Ginger Agua Fresca
  Makes about 2 quarts
  1 ripe medium pineapple
  1 tablespoon grated peeled ginger (about one 1 1/2-inch piece)
  1 1/4 cups simple syrup (recipe follows)
  3 cups water
  Peel the pineapple and remove the eyes. Core and cut into small chunks. Blend in a blender or food processor for about 25 seconds. The mixture will be pulpy. Put the pureed fruit in a pitcher. Add the ginger and simple syrup. Let stand for 1 or 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add the water and serve on ice.
• Simple Syrup
  1 cup water
  1 1/4 cups sugar
  Makes 1 cup. Mix the ingredients together in a medium saucepan. Boil for 1 minute, cover, and chill thoroughly. Refrigerated syrup keeps indefinitely.

To Order...

Patricia Unterman’s San Francisco Food Lover's Guide (4th ed. Published by Ten Speed Press. 565 pages. $18.95. ISBN: 1-58008-712-4) Available in most Bay Area bookstores. To order online, visit Ten Speed Press. or Amazon.com