San Francisco: Mexican Food

We want Mexican food tonight. Friends from California say that California has the best Mexican food. They go as far as saying New York has no decent Mexican food at all, at the low end. They will concede that California can’t do pizza like New York.

Our hotel concierge enthusiastically recommends Maya on 2^nd and Folsom. Set back from the street in an office building plaza, I think the bar and restaurant is probably hopping during the week. But it is quiet on this Sunday night, with only four or five tables seated in the large main room. Only one person works the front of the house.

I order a pomegranate Margarita on the rocks. Our guacamole and chips arrive in a two-tier silver serving tray. Gene and I each have a lobster taco appetizer—it sounds too good to share. I order a half-portion shrimp enchilada as a main course. I wish more restaurants offered small and large portions so I can try more dishes (without sharing).

Gene and I want to stop in a bar for a nightcap after the taxi drops us back in our Financial District/North Beach neighborhood. Last night, we could only find bars, no open restaurants. Tonight, we can only find restaurants and no bars. Not exactly no bars, we poke our heads into several. The classic Vesuvio Café has no bar to speak of—only tables. We feel like chatting with locals or the bartender. Each bar we look in has either too many people or too few. Coppola’s place locks their doors by 9:30 pm. The problem must be us; we are not in the right mood.

We walk back to the hotel to have our nightcap there. Hotel bars are always perfect—always seats available, but never deserted. And San Francisco Hilton bar carries Absolut Ruby Red.

We will pick up our rental car early tomorrow to start down Highway 1. Thirty-six hours in San Francisco is not enough.