- Taquerías
- El Farolito
- La Taquería Cancún
- others are good, but those are my regulars.
- Meats
- carne asada and carnitas: these are sort of the default meats
- al pastor: my favourite. Marinated pork
- chorizo: the most strongly flavoured one. It's a greasy Mexican sausage.
- cabeza: head meat. Also a good choice, although I usually prefer it on a taco
- lengua and sesos: these I also prefer on tacos
- Other considerations
- I always prefer black beans. The other choices are pinto and refritos
- Super burritos (+sour cream and cheese) are usually the default. Some places you have to specify if you want avocado added. This is always a good idea.
- Beverages
- have to try the horchata (sweet spiced rice drink)
- tamarindo (the brown one) is also a favourite
- agua fresa, if they have it. This is an amazing strawberry drink
- basically ask for something from their giant pitchers of beverage. Sometimes it is melon, strawberry, horchata, or other things
- orange and carrot juice: lucía taught me to love this
- Peñafiel - a sweet soda common in Mexican restaurants. Nothing special, but a bit of my childhood :-)
- Other things
- tostada de ceviche con aguacate - amazing
- tacos: sometimes I prefer these, although SF tacos are nothing to brag about. Probably LA and San Diego have better tacos
- quesadillas: great for a snack. I love carne asada quesadillas
- nachos: another thing you cannot get in any decent form in London
- Pizza
- Cheeze Board pizza in Berkeley. This is the one L & I were talking about, that only does one kind of pizza per day. Worth checking out if you happen to be in Berkeley. http://cheeseboardcollective.coop/pizza
- Phở
- Learning to like tripe and/or tendon will definitely go a long way towards appreciating phở. Then you can go to any restaurant and order the đặc biệt (special), which will usually have both tendon and tripe in it. Also, it's generally best to squeeze one of the lime wedges into the broth—this brings out a lot of the flavour, but they can't add it when the broth is too hot or the lime juice will cook.
- Try some of the beverages. Vietnamese iced coffee you already know. Salty plum soda is another favourite. And once in a while it's nice to get the egg-yolk soda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_s%E1%BB%AFa_h%E1%BB%99t_g%C3%A0
- Turtle Tower on Larkin St. - This place is one of the more well-known. It's a bit different from the other places.
- Golden Flower - This is a good spot in Chinatown. I used to go here every Friday.
- Vietnamese crab and garlic noodle
- Thanh Long on Judah Street is amazing. The two most important things to get there are the roast crab and the garlic noodles, although the shaking beef is also really good. Right now there's a dungeness crab catastrophe in SF, so all the crab is imported from Seattle :'( But it's probably still worth visiting.
- Breakfast
- Art's Cafe in the inner sunset has great classic American breakfast in a narrow restaurant on Irving St. The current owners are I think the third generation running the restaurant. The original Art has long passed, the it is run by a Korean couple now. They've added a few Korean items to the menu, which are okay (not great), but my favourite thing to order here is the fusion item: the tofu omelette that has sausage and kimchi in it.
- New Taraval Cafe on Taraval St. is another favourite place to go for American-style breakfast.
- Blue Bottle, you've already tried
- Four Barrel Coffee
- Peet's, The Beanery - these are classic second-wave coffee places
- Zanze's Cheesecake
- This guy has been doing nothing but making the same type of cheesecake for almost 40 years. They are amazing.
- http://www.yelp.com/biz/zanzes-cheesecake-san-francisco
- Kamei
- If you happen to be in the Richmond district, it's worth checking Kamei out. This is a Chinese restaurant supply store, but it's also a marvel in itself. Since you don't live in SF you probably won't want to buy anything, so it's not worth seeking out, but do stop in if you're in the neighbourhood.
- Muir Woods
- My favourite spot