And don't forget your stomach! San Francisco is definitely a food lover's paradise, boasting an amazing variety of restaurants, from inexpensive storefronts to pricey grand dining rooms, and featuring every imaginable cuisine. San Francisco dining is probably best known for its signature “California cuisine,” which emphasizes seasonal foods from local farmers and ranchers, with influences from French, Mediterranean, Asian, and traditional American cooking.
Alice Waters, executive chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, one of the most highly praised restaurants in the country, is often credited for introducing the world to contemporary California cuisine. First opened in 1971, Chez Panisse offers a daily changing fixed menu, featuring only the season's freshest ingredients in truly inspired recipes. Easily reached by BART, Chez Panisse is a few blocks from the Berkeley BART station on Shattuck Avenue and is well worth the trip to the East Bay. Reservations are essential and should be booked 3 to 4 weeks in advance.
Of course, you don't have to travel to Berkeley to enjoy Alice Waters's inspired cooking. Try Zuni Café, a pleasant ride on the “F” Streetcar down to Market and Franklin. Zuni is best known for its wood burning oven, succulent roast chicken with bread salad, fresh oysters, and a happening bar. Closer to the Palace Hotel, you might try Boulevard or Hawthorne Lane.
A multicultural city, San Francisco is home to some of the best ethnic restaurants in the country, especially Asian cuisines. Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, and Thai restaurants are abundant. For traditional Hong Kong style cuisine, try Great Eastern in Chinatown where seafood is the specialty. Yang Sink, just around the corner from the Palace, is a great place to go for dim sum. My favorite Thai restaurant, The Thai House, is in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood just north of the Castro where you'll find delicious chicken coconut soup prepared as hot or mild as you like it, pad Thai, and marvelous stuffed chicken wings.
San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.
Straits Café, a Singaporean restaurant, is unique and worth the bus ride on the 38 Geary. Try their murtabak, a meat pie appetizer served with an addictive peanut sauce; the tuna tower, and ayam kalasan, a crispy chicken dish served with spicy curry sauce. For a more upscale Asian food experience, try the Slanted Door in the Ferry Building, where you'll be treated to gourmet Vietnamese food of the highest caliber in a gorgeous setting.
Of course, you'll want to be planning your meals around the evening's entertainment and there will be plenty to choose from in June. From June 17–26 the San Francisco Symphony will be performing Mahler's Resurrection Symphony #2, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas and featuring soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian and mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. For opera lovers, the San Francisco Opera summer season will be presenting Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Puccini's La Boheme, and Busoni's Doktor Faust. And for those musical theater lovers who have been too busy to head to Broadway, you can catch The Lion King at the Orpheum Theatre and Hairspray at the Golden Gate Theatre. Drama lovers are also in for a treat because Eve Ensler, of Vagina Monologues fame, will be premiering her new play, The Good Body, at the American Conservatory Theatre. A quick BART ride will get you to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre to see Rita Moreno star as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally's critically acclaimed Master Class, directed by Moises Kaufman.
If you're more in the mood for live music in a club or cabaret, you will also have plenty to choose from. Jazz is making a big comeback in San Francisco with several new clubs on the scene. Jazz at Pearls in North Beach, which was recently reopened by jazz singer Kim Nally, features local and nationally known musicians. Club Jazz Nouveau at the Cannery near Fisherman's Wharf presents big as well as up and coming names in jazz and serves contemporary southern cuisine. For cabaret, head to the Plush Room at the York Hotel where
Gary Grossman, Ph.D., is a member and faculty, San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. He chairs the Local Arrangements Committee for the San Francisco meeting.
Milton Schaefer, Ph.D., is an advanced candidate, San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute.
Heather Macrae will be performing her solo show, Songs for My Father, a tribute to her dad, legendary Broadway star Gordon Macrae.
Art lovers are also in for a treat in June. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, just a short walk from the Palace, is an impressive building designed by Mario Butta, and will be showing Pop Art from California collections. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, right across the street from SFMOMA, is a small museum focusing on very contemporary art, often with a political sociological focus. Its exhibits are always cutting edge and often thought provoking. It borders on a very pleasant park that is one of the only green spaces really convenient to the hotel.
The Legion of Honor has a more varied collection with some emphasis on French Art and an extensive collection of Rodin sculptures. An Art Deco exhibit that runs through July 4 promises to be fabulous. The museum is housed in an exquisite Beaux Arts building perched on a park bordering the ocean with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, bay, ocean, and Marin headlands. When the weather is good, the mix of art and views is unbeatable. The Asian Art Museum is newly installed in the old Main Library, reconfigured by architect Gay Auletti, who was also responsible for the Musee D'Orsay in Paris. It houses the Avery Brundage collection, certainly one of the premier collections of Asian Art in the world. It will have a special exhibit of new acquisitions of contemporary Asian Art, however it's the permanent collections that are quite special.
Most of the better contemporary art galleries are close to one another and right near the Palace. Two buildings at 49 and 77 Geary Street house nearly 20 galleries and it's almost a New York experience to wander from gallery to gallery for a few hours. The shows at Fraenkel Gallery, one of the premier photography galleries in the United States, are always elegant and museum quality. Be sure to stop in at Rena Bransten, Catherine Clark, Haines Gallery, Patricia Sweetow, and Stephen Wirtz. Across the street, Gallery Paula Anglim also shows interesting contemporary work. Around the block at 228 Grant Avenue there is the John Berggruen Gallery, which is probably the most upscale gallery in the city often showing contemporary and modern masters. While not as conveniently located, other galleries worth a visit include Hosfelt Gallery and Braunstein/Quay Gallery located at 430 Clementina Street, the galleries at the California College of Arts & Crafts Wattis Institute, located at 1111 8th Street, San Francisco Camerawork/New Langton Arts, 1246 Folsom Street, and the Berkeley Art Museum, which is across the bay on the UC Berkeley Campus.
For additional recommendations and more details, be sure to check the APsaA Web site for a comprehensive San Francisco City Guide.