Trying New Restaurants
Mar. 23rd, 2023 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerA number of times in the past few years I've said, "We should make a point of trying new restaurants, say once a month." Umpteen years ago that would've gone without saying. It used to be that we tried new restaurants at least once a week! That was when we first moved here. Back then, of course, everything was new.
Over time we developed a set of favorite restaurants which we visited again and again. Pizza? 5 great places. Mexican? At least 8 great restaurants. Indian, Chinese? Several superior examples of each. Afghani? That, too, and it was one of the best local restaurants overall. The SF Bay Area is home to an amazingly rich food scene. Most of these great places were within a couple miles of our home or workplaces.
Soon we reached such a critical mass of great restaurants as our usual haunts that we weren't inspired to try new things locally very often. Sometimes we even wondered why explore, as almost no place we hadn't tried yet would be better than what we'd already found. Then, too, something about getting older has made trying new restaurants less of a thing.
Good things don't last forever. As the years have rolled past many of those great restaurants we made our usual places years ago have disappeared. The restaurant biz is tough at the best of times, so there's always a certain amount of churn. At many, the owner retired and sold to a new owner who wasn't as good. Some restaurants closed up due to financing problems, especially after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. And the situation with Covid-19 for the past 3 years has been rough on restaurants, driving a number of them to close.
All that has left us with a dwindling number of "the usuals" for dining out. And many of what's left are no longer great but merely good. Oh, and fuck the idea about getting older making trying new restaurants less of a thing. We are not ready to put our taste buds into nursing homes and starting eating at Cracker Barrel. I don't even know where there's a Cracker Barrel locally. The only one I've ever eaten at was 2,500 miles away, joining my parents there at their insistence. Thus it's time to get more aggressive about trying new restaurants.
Over time we developed a set of favorite restaurants which we visited again and again. Pizza? 5 great places. Mexican? At least 8 great restaurants. Indian, Chinese? Several superior examples of each. Afghani? That, too, and it was one of the best local restaurants overall. The SF Bay Area is home to an amazingly rich food scene. Most of these great places were within a couple miles of our home or workplaces.
Soon we reached such a critical mass of great restaurants as our usual haunts that we weren't inspired to try new things locally very often. Sometimes we even wondered why explore, as almost no place we hadn't tried yet would be better than what we'd already found. Then, too, something about getting older has made trying new restaurants less of a thing.
Good things don't last forever. As the years have rolled past many of those great restaurants we made our usual places years ago have disappeared. The restaurant biz is tough at the best of times, so there's always a certain amount of churn. At many, the owner retired and sold to a new owner who wasn't as good. Some restaurants closed up due to financing problems, especially after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. And the situation with Covid-19 for the past 3 years has been rough on restaurants, driving a number of them to close.
All that has left us with a dwindling number of "the usuals" for dining out. And many of what's left are no longer great but merely good. Oh, and fuck the idea about getting older making trying new restaurants less of a thing. We are not ready to put our taste buds into nursing homes and starting eating at Cracker Barrel. I don't even know where there's a Cracker Barrel locally. The only one I've ever eaten at was 2,500 miles away, joining my parents there at their insistence. Thus it's time to get more aggressive about trying new restaurants.
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Date: 2023-03-24 09:16 am (UTC)Do you have any favorite Chinese places locally? Most of my go-to spots are no longer (RIP Szechuan Garden!) and I kind of fitfully looked for a similar place for a number of years. Not too authentic, but tasty is my particular happy zone with that.
I only know of one Afghani place nearby. It's a good one, though! And I'm still trying to figure out a really good gyros place closer than Milpitas or San Jose.
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Date: 2023-03-24 09:40 pm (UTC)For fast-casual Chinese I've been happy enough with Panda Express the past several years. They're good enough and consistent. Consistency is a big thing in Chinese food, given the regional variations in dishes with the same name as well as the range of cheap/shitty Chinese restaurants out there. For Dim Sum my local favorite is Fu Lam Mum on Castro.