【文章标题】：Where to eat in San Francisco
旧金山去哪吃
【文章正文】： Moriawase at An
在 An 的盛合
There’s actually a tradition of economics bloggers giving recommendations about where (and how) to eat out. Tyler Cowen
wrote a whole book on the subject
, as well as various
blog posts
, and maintains an
Ethnic Dining Guide
on the web! I’m not going to be that thorough or go that deep. But over the last year I’ve gone to quite a few restaurants in San Francisco, so I thought I might share what I’ve learned.
其实，经济学博主们有一个传统，就是推荐去哪里（以及如何）外出就餐。泰勒·考恩（Tyler Cowen）为此写了一整本书，还写了不少博客文章，并在网上维护了一份《民族餐饮指南》！我不打算那么详尽或深入。但过去一年里，我去了旧金山不少餐厅，所以我想分享一下我学到的东西。
In fact, this quest was born out of contrarianism. A lot of people say that the restaurant scene in San Francisco is mediocre, boring, or disappointing. The haters range from
food critics
and
New York chefs
to some SF residents themselves. I’ve lived in this city for a decade now, and although the restaurant scene here isn’t
the
best I’ve found — NYC and LA are better, and Japanese cities just annihilate all competition — I’ve always found plenty of good places to eat. When people portray SF as some sort of food desert, I’m convinced it’s a skill issue.
事实上，这次探索源于一种逆反心理。很多人说旧金山的餐饮场景平庸、无聊或令人失望。这些批评者从美食评论家和纽约厨师，到一些旧金山居民本身。我在这座城市住了十年，虽然这里的餐饮并不是我见过最好的——纽约和洛杉矶更好，日本城市更是秒杀一切对手——但我总能找到很多好吃的餐厅。当人们把旧金山描绘成某种美食荒漠时，我确信那是他们自己找食的本事有问题。
So to be thorough, I set out to try all of the good restaurants in the entire city. That’s a project that’s bound to fail, of course — there are just too many, and quality can vary over time, and places are always opening and closing. But at this point I think I’ve eaten at enough places to write a fairly authoritative guide to restaurants in San Francisco.
所以为了做到全面，我开始尝试这座城市所有好吃的餐厅。当然，这个项目注定会失败——餐厅太多了，品质会随时间变化，而且总有新店开张和老店关门。但到现在，我觉得自己吃过的餐厅已经足够多，可以写一份相当有权威性的旧金山餐厅指南了。
What this guide is and is not
本指南是什么，不是什么
Writing about food is an inherently difficult thing to do, because
taste doesn’t easily translate into language
. There are plenty of reasons for this, including:
People don’t
biologically
experience the same taste the same way. The most famous example is how
some people taste cilantro like soap
due to a variation in one particular
gene
. But there are lots of
other examples
. When I try to describe the taste of a particular dish or ingredient, chances are that your physical experience of it will be different from what I experienced, and you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering if I’m an alien.
写美食本来就是一件很困难的事，因为味觉很难用语言表达。原因有很多，包括：
人们在生物学上并不会以相同的方式体验同一种味道。最著名的例子是，有些人因为某个特定基因的变异，尝香菜时觉得像肥皂。但还有很多其他例子。当我试图描述某道菜或某种食材的味道时，很可能你身体上的体验和我的不同，你会挠头疑惑我是不是外星人。
Even if people did experience tastes the same way, people’s
preferences
would probably differ radically on most things. Some of this is due to personal associations —
conditioned taste aversion
is very much a thing, for example. There are probably lots of other reasons as well. It isn’t just what we like and dislike, either —
how much
we like and dislike each combination of tastes can make the difference in whether we like a restaurant overall.
即使人们对味道的体验相同，人们的偏好也可能在大多数事情上截然不同。其中一部分源于个人联想——例如，条件性味觉厌恶就是一种非常真实的现象。可能还有很多其他原因。这不仅仅是我们喜欢什么、不喜欢什么的问题——我们对每种味道组合的喜欢程度，可能决定我们是否喜欢一家餐厅。
Culinary experiences are not very uniform across the population, so we haven’t been able to develop as much of a
shared vocabulary
to describe what we’re tasting — if I’ve eaten Sichuan pepper and you haven’t, it’s a little like trying to describe the color red to a blind person. And since most people have only eaten a small percentage of what there is to eat in the world, the region of overlapping experience across the entire population is small; thus, we simply don’t have many words that refer to taste experiences that most people have had.
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烹饪体验在人群中的差异很大，所以我们无法建立起多少共享词汇来描述我们的味觉——如果我吃过花椒而你没有，这有点像向盲人描述红色。而且由于大多数人只吃过世界上所有食物的一小部分，整个人群中重叠体验的区域很小；因此，我们根本没有多少词能指代大多数人都经历过的味觉体验。
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To see how hard it is to describe food in words, try the following exercise. Pick five restaurants you like, and five you don’t like, and mix them together in a list. Ask your favorite AI chatbot to pick five of these that you should go to, and five you should avoid, and ask it to explain why you’d like and dislike them. Chances are you’ll have no idea what it’s talking about. AI can do the most advanced math on Earth, but describing taste in words is an exercise for which good training data simply doesn’t exist.
想知道用语言描述食物有多难，试试下面的练习。选五家你喜欢的餐厅和五家你不喜欢的，把它们混在一起列个清单。让你最喜欢的 AI 聊天机器人从中挑出五家你应该去的和五家你应该避免的，并让它解释你为什么喜欢和不喜欢它们。很可能你根本不知道它在说什么。AI 能算出地球上最复杂的数学题，但用语言描述味觉，却是一项根本没有良好训练数据的任务。
So when I say my restaurant guide is “authoritative”, I don’t mean I’m an authority. I just mean I’ve been to a lot of restaurants, and I know which ones I like and don’t like, and I can describe why I like and dislike them in terms that make sense to
me
. But obviously this is all just me describing my subjective experience and hoping that it resonates with you. So when you go through this guide and find yourself nodding in vigorous agreement with some of the recommendations, and screwing up your face in confusion at others, well…I warned you.
所以当我说我的餐厅指南‘有权威性’时，我并不是说我自己是权威。我只是说我吃过很多餐厅，知道自己喜欢什么不喜欢什么，并且能用我自己觉得有意义的语言描述原因。但显然，这完全是我在描述自己的主观体验，并希望它能引起你的共鸣。所以当你翻阅这本指南，发现自己对某些推荐频频点头，而对另一些却皱眉不解时——嗯，我警告过你了。
Also, I’m not well-versed in the art of food criticism, so I’m not going to try very hard to describe the tastes I experienced at these restaurants. But I
am
pretty well-versed in the art of noticing patterns and thinking about explanations for things, and so this guide is going to focus less on the particulars of various dishes than on questions like “Why is SF’s food scene not the best in the country?” and “What kinds of restaurants are generally good in SF?”.
另外，我并不精通美食评论的艺术，所以我不打算费力描述我在这些餐厅品尝到的味道。但我确实很擅长观察模式并思考事物的解释，所以这本指南将更少关注各种菜肴的细节，而是聚焦于诸如‘为什么旧金山的餐饮场景不是全美最佳？’和‘旧金山哪些类型的餐厅通常不错？’这类问题。
As for my recommendations themselves, my criterion for ranking restaurants highly isn’t just how good they are. It’s what I call “yums per dollar”
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— basically, whether the culinary experience you got was worth the price you paid. So I’m perfectly happy ranking a good taqueria up there with a Michelin-star place.
至于我自己的推荐，我给餐厅高排名的标准不只是它们有多好，而是我所说的‘每美元美味指数’（yums per dollar）——基本上就是你获得的烹饪体验是否值回你付的价钱。所以我完全乐意把一家好的墨西哥卷饼店排在米其林星级餐厅旁边。
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Speaking of Michelin-star places, I’ve decided not to include any places that are over $150 a person or so (before tax and tip). That’s already quite expensive, and I don’t want to be the kind of guy who recommends people to a bunch of restaurants they can’t afford to go to. And quite frankly, I’ve only been to one or two of those anyway. So, apologies to Benu, Quince, Californios, and the rest of those guys.
说到米其林星级餐厅，我决定不纳入人均消费超过 150 美元左右（税前和未算小费）的餐厅。那已经相当贵了，我不想成为那种推荐一堆人们去不起的餐厅的人。而且说实话，那种地方我也只去过一两家。所以，抱歉了，Benu、Quince、Californios 以及其他那些餐厅。
Finally, I’ve eaten at several hundred restaurants in SF, but that’s only about 10% of the total. So if you have some recommendations for good ones I should try, feel free to drop them in the comments. And of course this post is just Part 1 in a series; Part 2 will have updated recommendations, cafes, bakeries, dessert places, and some restaurants from out of town.
最后，我在旧金山吃过几百家餐厅，但这只占总量的 10% 左右。所以如果你有什么好店推荐给我，欢迎在评论区留言。当然，这篇文章只是一个系列的第一部分；第二部分会有更新的推荐、咖啡馆、面包店、甜品店，以及一些城外餐厅。
Garbage salad at side a
side a 的垃圾沙拉
Why is SF’s food scene not the best in the country?
为什么旧金山的餐饮场景不是全美最佳？
First, I thought I should address the big question: Why isn’t San Francisco’s food scene better than it is? I’ve already gone on record saying that NYC and LA are better (though the difference isn’t huge). Why?
首先，我想应该先回答这个大问题：为什么旧金山的餐饮场景没有更好？我之前已经公开说过纽约和洛杉矶更好（虽然差距不大）。为什么？
There’s one obvious, overriding reason:
city size
. San Francisco is a city of 826,000 people; New York City has 8.58 million, while LA has 3.87 million. So if the number of restaurants is generally proportional to the number of people, then even if quality were equivalent, we’d expect NYC to have more than
ten times as many
good restaurants as SF, and LA to have more than four times as many.
有一个显而易见且压倒一切的原因：城市规模。旧金山是一个有 82.6 万人口的城市；纽约有 858 万，洛杉矶有 387 万。所以如果餐厅数量大致与人口成正比，那么即使质量相同，我们也应该预期纽约的好餐厅数量是旧金山的十倍以上，洛杉矶则是四倍以上。
This would lead very naturally to people thinking SF has a worse food scene than those much larger cities. The restaurants we go to are not a random sample; we try to pick the ones we’ll like the most. So if you can find 10 times as many restaurants you like in NYC, you might end up thinking restaurants in NYC are better on average, even if they’re not. (Also, larger populations mean NYC and LA have more partisans to stand up for their hometowns in online arguments.)
这会很自然地让人们觉得旧金山的餐饮场景比那些大城市差。我们去餐厅并不是随机抽样；我们会尽量挑自己最喜欢的。所以如果你能在纽约找到十倍于旧金山合你口味的餐厅，你最终可能会认为纽约的餐厅平均更好，即使事实并非如此。（另外，人口更多意味着纽约和洛杉矶有更多支持者会在网上为自己的家乡辩护。）
The people who bash San Francisco restaurants are often quick to explain that there’s plenty of great food in the rest of the Bay Area — in the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley, etc.), the Peninsula (South SF, Daly City, Redwood City, Mountain View), and in the South Bay (Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San Jose). And this is very true. But keep in mind that the Bay Area has a total of
nine million people
— a little bit more than New York City. I would
gladly
pit the entire SF Bay Area against all of NYC in terms of food.
那些抨击旧金山餐厅的人往往很快就会解释说，湾区其他地方有很多美食——东湾（奥克兰、伯克利等）、半岛（南旧金山、戴利城、红木城、山景城），以及南湾（米尔皮塔斯、桑尼维尔、库比蒂诺、圣何塞）。这确实如此。但请记住，湾区总共有九百万人口——比纽约市还多一点。我非常乐意拿整个旧金山湾区在美食方面与整个纽约市一较高下。
OK, but San Francisco is by far the
densest
part of the Bay Area, in terms of population per square mile. Why isn’t it considered the center of the metro area’s culinary scene, the way Manhattan is for NYC? Why do people tell you to go to the South Bay or the East Bay if you want to eat well?
好吧，但旧金山湾区每平方英里的人口密度远远高于其他地区。为什么它不像曼哈顿之于纽约那样，被视为整个都会区餐饮的中心？为什么人们会告诉你，想吃好的就去南湾或东湾？
I think there are several reasons for this. The first is simply
the insane rent
. SF is one of
the least affordable cities in the country
, thanks to the AI boom, the tech industry in general, draconian restrictions on housing development, the unique and excellent weather,
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and the fact that it’s destined by geography to be the dense core of a major metro area. On top of that, San Francisco is one of the hardest places to start a small business, thanks to
decades of
red tape
accumulated under supposedly “progressive” governance.
我认为有几个原因。第一个就是疯狂的高房租。旧金山是全美生活成本最高的城市之一，这要归功于 AI 热潮、整个科技行业、对住房开发的严苛限制、独特而绝佳的天气，以及它在地理上注定要成为大都会区的密集核心。此外，旧金山还是最难创办小企业的地方之一，因为多年来在所谓‘进步’治理下积累了大量繁文缛节。
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That means if you’re going to start a restaurant in San Francisco, you are probably going to have to charge a lot of money to make up for all the money and time you had to spend. The exceptions are restaurateurs who own their own buildings, who have long-term legacy leases, or who have owners who rent to them for below market rates. This means that SF food tends to be a sort of double-peaked distribution, with $600-a-person places like
Benu
and cheap banh mi places like
L&G
, but not a lot of mid-price places.
这意味着如果你要在旧金山开一家餐厅，你可能不得不收取很高的价格，以弥补你花费的金钱和时间。例外情况是那些拥有自己楼宇的餐厅老板、拥有长期遗产租约的人，或者业主以低于市场价租给他们的人。这意味着旧金山的美食呈现一种双峰分布：一边是像 Benu 这样人均 600 美元的餐厅，另一边是像 L&G 这样便宜的越式法包店，但中间价位的选择不多。
So if you’re a penniless 22-year-old tech founder living in a bunk bed in a grungy group house, or if you’re a 44-year-old tech founder who pocketed 200,000 working for a big tech company, there are going to be fewer of the kind of mid-priced options that you could afford but which would also give you a special night out.
所以，如果你是一个身无分文的 22 岁科技创业者，住在破旧合租屋的上铺，或者你是一个 44 岁、把公司卖给亚马逊赚了 8000 万美元、现在只‘做投资’的科技创业者，你更有可能对旧金山的餐饮场景感到满意。但如果你是一个 30 岁、在大型科技公司工作、年入 20 万美元的人，那么你能负担得起、同时又能给你一个特别夜晚的中档选择就会少一些。
SF’s stratospheric rent also probably exerts a more subtle corrosive influence on the food scene. The middle class has
largely been priced out of the city
, leaving it to the rich and the rent-controlled. That has largely hollowed out the kind of middle-class ethnic communities that patronize the great ethnic food scenes of Los Angeles, as well as the bohemian hipsters and artists who seek out the most creative affordable eating options.
旧金山高不可攀的租金可能还对餐饮场景产生了一种更微妙的腐蚀性影响。中产阶级大多已经被房价挤出城市，剩下的是富人和拥有租金管制的人。这在很大程度上掏空了那些光顾洛杉矶精彩民族美食场景的中产阶级族裔社区，以及那些寻找最具创意且实惠餐饮选择的波西米亚潮人和艺术家。
Everybody knows about SF’s rent problem, but I think one more factor that tends to fly under the radar is
limited competition due to geographic immobility
. New York has a great train system, making it pretty easy to get anywhere in the central city on foot. LA and all other American cities (including Oakland and San Jose) are driving towns, where you can often get very quickly from point to point. But San Francisco does not have a good intra-city train network (sorry, Muni!), nor is it car-friendly. You can Uber, but that gets expensive if you do it a lot. So in my experience, a lot of San Franciscans often end up just staying in their neighborhoods.
大家都知道旧金山的房租问题，但我觉得还有一个容易被忽视的因素，就是地理流动性受限导致的竞争不足。纽约有很棒的地铁系统，在中心城区步行去哪里都很方便。洛杉矶和所有其他美国城市（包括奥克兰和圣何塞）都是汽车城市，你通常