In the past few years, airports have made some real attempts to up their food games. Some have brought in popular local restaurants, while others have commissioned celebrity chefs to bring new restaurants into the airports. Gone are the days of Chili’s 2 Go being the only option, which meant that with a whole lot of spare time at San Francisco International Airport, I was able to make my way to Union Street Gastropub to grab a beer and a sandwich.

That sandwich wasn’t just some pre-made cold cuts with limp lettuce, it was the Korean Chicken Sandwich. This sandwich was filled with deep fried chicken tossed in a sweet and spicy sauce and topped with garlic aioli. For my side I went with the garlic parmesan tots because regular fries and sweet potato fries just didn’t sound like they could compare.

As for the sandwich itself, I was pretty happy with it. I couldn’t figure out what was exactly Korean about it, but I like the combination of sweet and spicy, which the sauce did pretty well. The chicken was plenty juicy and had a decent crisp to the outside, but there just didn’t seem to be enough of it for me. Like, I get that it’s an airport and I’m going to pay a lot of money, but the dish was just begging for more chicken, and so was I.

Yet, Union Street Gastropub is a huge improvement on your typical airport food and for that I was pleased, even if it’s far from being the best sweet and spicy fried chicken sandwich I’ve ever had.

A long, long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away, a friend once told me about a place called Roam Artisan Burgers in San Francisco. At the time, I was riding the wave of Umami Burger and all the other delicious burgers being pumped out of LA, so I didn’t pay too much attention to burgers happening up north. Yet, when the opportunity came to make my way to Roam, I pulled it off and even convinced a few people to join me.

Disappointingly, I found most burgers had a core vegetable component and would have required work to order without. Fortunately, though, there was a little something called the Tejano. Like all their burgers, it started with a choice of meats and bun. I picked the grass-fed beef and traditional sesame seed. Then, it was topped with pepperjack cheese, jalapeno relish, avocado, tomato, white corn strips (also known as chips) and herb ranch. I got mine without the tomato, then picked up a side of Russet Fries.

This all turned out to be a good choice, because my burger was pretty tasty. You might think all those ingredients would overwhelm the burger, but instead they all complemented each other. The strips stayed crispy, the avocado was super fresh and the cheese and jalapeno gave a nice kick. Even the herb ranch was done right. Plus, I have to say I was a fan of the sesame bun, which was toasted nicely. The beef patty itself could have been a bit bigger, but I kind of always think that so this was not something new to my life.

The fries were probably the low point of the meal, which is not to say they were bad. In fact they were just fine, but really nothing special. Perhaps kennebec fries would have performed better than russet.

Roam was a good experience, and the kind of place that shows burgers with thought behind them can really come together nicely.

What do you do when you’re stuck in San Francisco’s Financial District late at night and looking for an actual meal? I sure as hell didn’t know the answer, but my friends guided me to Osha Thai, a place that apparently has multiple locations, but the one we went to was ready and willing to take in a sizable crew. After a lengthy debate about what to eat, who wanted to be a part of the family-style and how I was going to get my share of meat, we made our order.

T

hat order turned out to be Volcanic Beef, Pad Thai, Panang Curry, Crab Fried Rice and a crazy dessert. The short story is that it was all delicious. The long story is this:

The Volcanic Beef was steak, onion rings, basil, black pepper and lava sauce. Of course, the sauce wasn’t real lava but it definitely had a good kick to it. The beef was cubic, tender and flavorful…just like a volcano. The Pad Thai was…well…Pad Thai. It is what it is. And in this case my friends went with tofu as the protein, so I kind of avoided it.

The Panang Curry was a big hit for the crowd in my seat (aka me). It was just the right amount of spicy for a white person, which meant that it may have even made a Thai person feel some of a kick. Maybe not a big kick, but still something. The Crab Fried Rice was also a winner in that this dish was made with real crab. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t imitation crab, I mean there were literally claws in the rice that had to be cracked open to rip the delicious invertebrate flesh out.

And of course there was the dessert. I truly wish I lived in a world where I was a responsible enough food blogger to remember the name, but I chose to rely on the Osha Thai menu online and it completely failed me. But I can say that it was good and if you get a chance to go, just show them my picture and ask them to make it. How could they say no to that?

Osha Thai turned out to be a pretty tasty meal. I can’t say it was the best Thai I’ve ever had, but I was impressed by the interesting twists that made it more than just your average upscale ethnic eatery. There’s a good reason the place is all over San Francisco.

Something unique about San Francisco is that day drinking is kind a given. If you don’t enjoy throwing back a few beers on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you’re pretty much considered antisocial in San Fran. So on Sunday morning when we decided to go out for brunch, I should have known I was in for more than just brunch.

We went to a place called Lime in the Castro. Walking in, the place looks a lot more like a nightclub than a brunch restaurant. I love Sunday morning mimosas as much as the next guy, and I have no problem eating at a place that looks like a club, but this is the last place I would have wanted to be if I was hungover. Not only were the acoustics of the place loud because of all the people, but there was loud music blasting all the way. One of our friends had arrived early, so we were lucky and didn’t have much of a wait.

We were seated and I took a look at the menu. Nothing looked particularly special and the menu wasn’t too long, but one thing did stick out at unique. The Ruben Sandwich. I’d never seen this on a brunch menu and was certainly intrigued. What was even more intriguing for me is that grilled cheese with bacon is my favorite morning-after-drinking food and the Ruben was about as close as I could get on this menu. It was made with gruyere, pastrami, sauerkraut and Russian dressing. It also came with fries. I ordered mine without the sauerkraut (that terrible pickled vegetable masquerading as food), and waited.

The food didn’t take too long, and if it had hardly anyone would have noticed because everyone at the table had ordered bottomless mimosas or bloody marys (except for me, since I was the lucky driver for the long road back to LA). The Ruben came and looked pretty good. The bread looked mice and crispy and the pastrami was nice and pink. I bit in and and found the pastrami to be really tough. I know Ruben pastrami is generally tougher than typical Jewish deli pastrami, but this was especially difficult, to the point where my incisors were rendered useless. With each bite, I essentially ripped out an entire slab of pastrami and had to bite it off and replace it in the sandwich with my bare hands. It was a messy situation to say the least.

As far as my enjoyment, I definitely felt like the Ruben could have used some work. Even without the tough pastrami, the inside of the sandwich was a little bit soggy. The probably wasn’t helped by the constant replacing of pastrami within the sandwich.

But this wasn’t a meal meant for the sober. I realized halfway through that I was not the appropriate clientele for Lime. Had I not needed to drive afterward, I might have downed a few mimosas myself to improve my meal, but without any drinks in me, Lime just wasn’t all that it could have been.

Now calling a restaurant Sushi Raw may seem redundant at first, because sushi is usually…well…raw. But the name does have a ring to it and almost sounds like it could be the Japanese word for “Law.” So even though I’m no sushi fan, I was still interested in seeing what this sushi could be like. Sushi Raw has locations throughout San Francisco and the one we went to was in the Lower Haight.

As per usual at sushi restaurant, I found myself staring at the menu for a long time. My biggest trouble with sushi is that usually no matter what you get, most things taste pretty much the same to me. I don’t know if this means I don’t have a refined palette or that there is very little difference between raw tuna and raw salmon. With this in mind, the first dish I ordered here was not sushi at all. It was the Beef Short Rib.

The short rib came with a scoop of rice and was made with the chef’s special sauce. It ended up looking like just about every other Asian short rib I’d ever seen, which was a good sign because I like that stuff. Then I bit in and found this to be some of the toughest short rib I’d ever eaten. It was either cooked too long or never tenderized, because eating this required me to get my hands dirty holding down part of the beef while my mouth bit off the other end. The sauce was good, but wasn’t really too special.

Since the place specialized in sushi, I also ordered a really interesting-looking roll I found. It was called the Eclipse Roll and consisted of spicy tuna, cream cheese and house special sauce (which I assumed was different from the chef’s special sauce). Oh, it was also deep-fried. The place may be called Sushi Raw, but I was in no mood for raw sushi.

When my Eclipse Roll came, everyone looked at my dish in amazement. It came shaped like an arch, standing atop my plate. And what’s even cooler than that is that the roll was already cut. The Eclipse Roll was defying gravity, and I hoped that presentation wasn’t the only thing I enjoyed about the roll. Immediately after taking my picture, I knocked the roll down and pulled out a section with my chopsticks. I bit into the first section and was actually impressed. It still had some of the strange texture of raw sushi, but the flavor of the spicy tuna and cream cheese was unleashed by the deep frying. It was like someone soaked a fish stick in spicy sauce, fried it, dipped it in cream cheese and wrapped it in rice. And then made it look fancy. It was like the grown up version of a boyhood dream of just throwing a bunch of things you like into one place and then deep frying them. The Eclipse Roll had definitely been a good choice.

So although I can’t speak for any of the raw sushi at Sushi Raw, I can say that going with a deep fried roll is a good choice. I can also say that ordering something that isn’t sushi here is likely a bad choice, as proven by my short ribs. If deep fried sushi was a more common occurrence, you might see the Unvegan at a few more sushi places.

On my last day in San Francisco, I headed to The Grind Cafe before hitting the road.

The menu looked pretty good. Despite a lot of the dishes having vegetables, the combinations with the vegetables removed looked like they would have been pretty enjoyable. One dish in particular looked extra good to me, though, the Corned Beef Hash. I have always found that dish to have quite the name and a nice little mix of ingredients. I went to the counter to order, only to be told that they were all out of it. Disappointed, I checked the menu again and ordered the Breakfast Burrito, which came with eggs, bacon, cheddar, avocado, salsa and sour cream. It was too early and I had too many hours on the road to be eating sour cream, so I ordered it without. It also came with hash browns on the side.

When my burrito came, the hash browns were the first thing I noticed. A perfect little rectangle, they looked like the yin to my yang of burrito. The burrito was nice and big, and I went to work on eating the thing. About midway through my burrito, I set it down to eat some hash browns. The moment I took my hand off of it, it was snagged by my girlfriend, who had been sitting next to me and watching me enjoy each of my bites. I had to wrestle a bit to get my burrito back and made sure to never let go from there on out, even if I was eating hash browns. In a strange twist, I couldn’t even finish the thing and offloaded the last bit to her anyway.

It was a pretty good burrito, despite being my second choice, but there also wasn’t anything surprising or unique about it. Aside from the hash browns it came with, it was pretty generic and could use a little something extra to set it apart from typical breakfast burritos.

I should’ve known better, but it really wasn’t up to me. Living in SoCal has probably spoiled me in terms of Mexican food, but I was in San Francisco with some people from Arizona, and I assumed they knew Mexican better than me. They suggested La Barca, so we went.

We had some margaritas and chips to start off the night, which were actually pretty good, but then I opened up the menu and was shocked to see the prices. $10.50 for a burrito? In San Francisco?! Whack!

In the end, however, I ended up choosing that burrito, for it seemed to be one of the most unvegan options. Of the meat choices, I picked Chili Colorado Beef, which sounded impressive, although it is apparently neither from Chile nor Colorado…

When it came, I was happy to see it joined by beans and rice, which made me feel a little better for the price, but someone had also thrown some sort of strange, Mexican salad on my plate, nearly spoiling the whole effect.

I tasted the burrito and it was really only halfway decent. Kind of disappointing for a meat called Chili Colorado Beef. It also wasn’t very big, being quite overshadowed by the other foods on my plate. The variety of food did fill me up, but it was only because of the rice and beans or else I would have left with a growling stomach.

In desperate need of brunch and a beer in San Francisco, I headed to Liverpool Lil’s, a nice little pub with that serves more than just your average pub food. A lot of their offerings looked pretty good, but the one that stood out most to me was one of their daily specials, Chicken and Waffles. I have always been intrigued by the concept of chicken and waffles. I feel like for most foods, you can’t really credit one specific person. In my mind, most were developed through the ages by a group of people, a village or a town. But chicken and waffles, on the other hand, had to be one lone genius who decided this bizarre mix would produce a beloved dish.

Regardless of how the dish was born, I was just happy with the knowledge of their existence and looked forward to trying it for myself. It arrived at my table with a glorious mix of gravy and syrup. The chicken was fried with a nice spicy kick and the huge buttermilk waffle did a great job of sucking down the virtual cornucopia of flavors. The dish was so huge that I was happy to share it with everyone at my table, and even then I had to struggle to eat the last few bites. I washed it down with my hefeweizen and took a few moments to reflect upon what I had just eaten. Not even in their wildest dreams could my ancestors have imagined that their descendant would some day eat such a meal.

For my first chicken and waffles, I was pretty impressed. It’s definitely a dish I’d like to get in the future, but I’d like to test out some different places to see the wide variety of chicken and waffles the world has to offer.

When I walked into Jenny’s Burgers in the Inner Sunset area of San Francisco, I couldn’t believe how cheap the menu was. Everything was under $10 and it all looked pretty good. After a quick look, I chose the bacon cheeseburger.

I watched as the guy behind the counter took the patty out, laid it upon the flame grill and started spinning it around the flames. It was almost hypnotic. Although it took a long time to cook the burger in this way, it was done just right.

Rather than dealing with the pesky condiments and toppings themselves, Jenny’s has them all next to the counter in a sort of buffet style. This worked out great for me, as I could avoid the vegetables and choose the only condiment necessary for this sort of burger: barbecue sauce.

I would definitely head back to Jenny’s if I lived in San Francisco, the price to quality ratio is pretty hard to beat.

On a weekend in San Francisco, I found myself at the Marina and a restaurant called Squat & Gobble. Since the food I like to eat often squats and gobbles, I figured this would be a good place for me.

The menu was chalked onto the wall, and I felt awkward staring at it for such a long time before choosing. The main reason I took so long was because despite the name, many of the food items included food that neither squats nor gobbles (vegetables). The majority of the foods were crepe based, which I always like, but if a crepe is ordered wrong, it is extremely difficult to remedy the situation through picking out invasive veggies. After much debating, I chose the Chicken Pesto crepe. The ingredients listed were mozzarella, onions, chicken breast, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. I got mine without the onions or sun-dried tomatoes, waited at my table with my number and hoped that none of the uninvited ingredients had made their way into my food.

When it came, it looked great on the outside. I lifted up a flap to see what was inside and it passed my test. I set out to eating and was pretty happy with the results. The ingredients mixed together very well within the crepe and as I ate, I could only imagine how poorly the suckers felt who had ordered it with the veggies.