Adrianna Tan
Need about my favorite boba chain from Taiwan (Chi Cha San Sen) opening in Cupertino, LA, and later Berkeley and Daly City really drives home a demographic and political point about San Francisco: permitting sucks and is expensive in the city, but even if you succeeded at it, you don’t have the crucial mass of young Asian Americans to spend money in nice places.
Chi Cha San Sen is worlds apart from whatever passes for boba in San Francisco. It’s the specialty coffee to airplane coffee.
Adrianna Tan
Personally I’m really bored of food places in SF mainly catering to rich tech people. It’s just all bad. I have a few faves, but I truly believe the demographic shift also means the reason why I go to Oakland, Fremont, Milpitas for good immigrant food is a cost of living and gentrification and demographic and city government failure issues (permitting is incredibly corrupt in SF)
Adrianna Tan
@h_thoreson yeah, I really like the nature stuff being close and walkability, but coming from a global food city, SF is not what it claims to be. I think it used to be, but is no longer. Oakland has far more interesting things, but even then that’s.. the size and density of one neighborhood in LA.
hannah
@skinnylatte my sister Kate lives in SF and she doesn't understand why it seems less magical to me than LA. It's partially the weather but partially the insane cost of living and rapid tech gentrification has just pushed everything else out to the margins. It makes it a less interesting place to even visit because ultimately, if I want to hang out with rich techies and eat mall food court stuff, I could just go to Irvine, or Santa Monica, and save myself a lot of hassle.
Adrianna Tan
@h_thoreson SF has a bunch of $150-350 pp sushi and ramen places (not a typo) that i swear are $50 places in LA. And elsewhere
hannah
@skinnylatte But most of LA is still much more normal and culturally diverse. There are some techies here- but it's not *literally everyone*
Adrianna Tan
@Jackiemauro did I ever complain to you about Ernest? $200 pp tasting menu, supposedly the best new American food we’ve got. People really love it. But! It’s extremely boring stuff like lo mein carbonara and shaved ice. It’s white guys being proud they know how to make Asian shaved ice desserts.
I’m extremely bored of restaurants like that. There’s a few Mexican and Chinese and Thai spots I love, but by and large there isn’t a whole lot of nice food in SF that isn’t also food I can personally cook
JackieM
@skinnylatte there’s a particular pain to it too having grown up here before the tech boom when we DID have good food. Ugh.
Adrianna Tan
@h_thoreson get a list from me next time! San Jose.. is better for Chinese and Korean and the Indian scene is unbeatable (one of the best in the world outside of south india and Singapore and Malaysia)
But you have to go to specific places. The popular places that tech people go to there are bad and worse than SF
hannah
@skinnylatte I noticed the same thing. I have had one standout meal in SF, but most of the food there has been pretty meh but somehow 2x as expensive as NY or LA. San Jose is somehow even worse, I had tacos there that seemed like they were using canned chicken???? Ew.
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