Michelin Red Guide 2008 San Francisco Bay Area & Wine Country (Michelin Red Guides)

Found this little and handy book at the local Santa Cruz library. Considering that it was very recent print (2008 edition), solid book-binding and very handy and practical (almost a pocket-book) I decided to give it a try. I have lived in the Monterey Bay and San Jose/Silicon Valley areas for the last 10 years but am not very familiar with "the City" (San Francisco). This guide focuses on restaurants and good eating (almost 300 pages) and leaves 60 pages for hotels and places to stay.

I have not had the chance or extravagant budget to try too many of the more exquisite restaurants listed in this guide. The descriptions of location, ambiance, and menu looks accurate and very helpful. For wider selection, I would supplement this guide with Yelp (online reviews written by locals). The menu-price listing ranges from under $25 (not too many) to over $60 (also a few) and with the rest for the 2nd and 3rd tier ($25-$40 and $40-$60).

The best features of this guide (IMHO) are:
a) the expandable maps inside the covers,
b) the descriptions and maps of each little neighborhood in San Francisco (which were great help for me), AND
c) the inclusion of South Bay, East Bay, Napa & Sonoma areas.

To make browsing easier, the editors have included a very helpful listing of all restaurants by cuisine type, restaurant type, neighborhoods, and alphabetical at the beginning of the book. Happy travels & Guten Appetit!

I visit the San Francisco area a couple of times a year (actually, I spend most of my time in the Wine Country, where I have family), and it's always great to have reliable recommendations for dining there. The Michelin San Francisco, Bay Area and Wine Country Guide has the imprimatur of the Michelin name, and I can vouch that its reviews of the dining establishments I've "vetted" myself (Spinnaker's, Brix, Kenwood, Cafe Citti, Wolf House) are absolutely spot-on, which makes me eager to try more of Michelin's recommendations. I might quibble about the exclusion of a few of my favorite places (particularly the superb Italian cuisine and cozy, old-California ambience of the Swiss Hotel in Sonoma, which I urge the Michelin raters--and whomever is reading this review--to consider), but in general this guide gives readers a cornucopia of excellent restaurants and hotels to choose from.

the Michelin Guides in Europe, for the most part, are thousands of pages long (2,010 for France, 1,300 for Italy) and are similar in price to the individual guides for San Francisco/Napa, LA, and Las Vegas, none of which are more than 350 pages. I'd really like to see a combo California-Nevada guide. Come to think of it, an "East Coast" (Bos-Wash) guide would be great too. Geographically the populated part of California + the more populated parts of Nevada are about the same size, though only about 75% as populous, as France. The Northeast corridor is similar in population and even smaller geographically, so why not give us a comparable deal? I'd feel a lot better about shelling out the dough every year or two if the US guides had expanded coverage.

Anyway, the guide for San Francisco is well done and worth buying if you live there or get there often. The LA guide I found to be lacking in review quality and to some degree writing style. I don't know anything about Vegas restaurants.

I am in China but I love Michelin Guides although there is no Michelin Red Guide for China or any Chinese city. That's why I decided to buy this book as a gift to a friend of mine in California. My friend received the book and told me in an email that it's a great book, that he and his wife know some of the places and will try more places. I really look forward to seeing Michelin Red Guide coming to China.

This is a great book for checking out many Bay Area restaurants and geographical areas like the wine country. The restaurant synopses are very accurate and the ratings are quite fair, if tough. For example, two-star Aqua was our best dining experience this summer during a three month stay in SF, eating out almost every night. And Perbacco was our favorite new place, and got an excellent marking from Michelin.
I read and trust Michael Bauer, and we've got Patricia Untermann's excellent Food Lovers Guide to SF, but for having one book, I would take Michelin.