Some cities reveal what I cherish about them much more immediately than others. I've noticed that what I love about SF can be hard for visitors to see. How do you visit "weird people taking ideas v seriously"? How to put that in a guidebook? You've gotta go to the dinner parties.
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We met a Spanish couple at Alamo Square last w/e that explained to me their disappointment: "Sure, it's pretty, but the food is bad, I don't feel safe, the streets are dead... I don't get it!" I told them that the people are agentic and that's contagious. Blank stares. /shrug
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"The food is bad"?! Boy, they really screwed up!!
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The dead streets is true for some parts of SF and sense of unsafety is definately there, if you grow up in Spain you'll see what the way things should feel is.
But food: Yeah, SF has pretty great food. In Madrid is harder to find good chinese, italian, etc.
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Maybe they tried a spanish restaurant in SF (I went to one, it was meh). I maintain the best paella in town is still mine lol.
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I haven't found any of the Spanish restaurants in the city to be on par with good places in, say, Barcelona. It's an interesting contrast to many other (esp Euro) cuisines, where (IME!) good SF restaurants are often better than top-rated places in their origin countries.
FWIW the best paella I've had in SF was at Coqueta, but I haven't returned since it was cancelled.
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+1 to José's comment about growing up in Spain. Btw, the best paella I've tried in SF is at Destapas (24th street) 🥘!
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