What is street food? Street food is good food that's not fancy. It's a great meal you can order quickly, yet without feeling like you're supposed to leave fast. It's food the locals usually know about--food that you don't feel strange eating by yourself, but are always glad to reveal to a special friend. Street food costs less than $10 per person. You order it at the counter, or at least pay for it there.
The Original Perfect Hamburger
by Eric MillerYou see some pretty amazing cross-cultural combinations in restaurants in San Francisco. Donuts, teriyaki, and hamburgers come to mind…then there's the common combination of donuts and hamburgers without the teriyaki. I was recently in a place in the Richmond district that had so many different kinds of food…French, German, Italian; sausage, bread, leg-of-lamb, spaghetti, and most any possible Chinese dish.
What's got to be even more interesting is how these places come about, being handed from owner to owner as different populations move in and leave the neighborhood, each adding their own flavor. Some add more than others.
It reminds me of a barbershop I encountered in downtown Oakland. It looked interesting, and I needed a haircut, so I dropped in. An elderly Chinese man cut my hair while listening to big band music in English. That wasn't strange at all in itself, given his age. I then noticed the photos that hung on the walls were of a white man and his dancing career, a man who I assumed used to be the proprietor. Maybe they were once partners in the shop, who knows, but I really got the feeling that once the previous owner left, this guy showed up and kept things going without so much as changing the pictures on the wall.
That happens a lot more than you may realize in all kinds of establishments, which brings me to the Original Perfect Hamburger.
I noticed the place many times on my walks through the flavorful Tenderloin and Nob Hill. There were three of my favorite words, all together on one sign--original, perfect, and hamburger. How can you beat a hamburger and a coke after a long hike up one of San Francisco's hills?
It took years until I actually tried it. I had, after-all, already located a hamburger in San Francisco that can't be beat (the KK Cafe). Still, I gave it a shot at living up to its name--and it did pretty good.
Inside I felt a mild American-German or Swiss flavor in the décor, or if not that, it definitely felt like a diner that had been around and been serving burgers for a while. Yet the people running it were Asian and probably Chinese. Could it be an occident? I could be wrong, but I had the feeling these folks bought the business at some point in time and kept making burgers rather than changing the name, which of course is fine with me because I like hamburgers.
The cost was reasonable for a good hamburger at just over five dollars. As usual I ordered everything just to see what everything was. It included generous portions of the usual vegetables (onions, lettuce, and tomato) and mayonnaise. The size was more than adequate (I usually don't order fries if they aren't included--they weren't-- because the burger usually fills me up--it did).
Many establishments claim to have the best hamburger, and many are good at coming close. Still, this one claims to be both original and perfect. I don't know how a hamburger can be original, unless perhaps if there was something unique about it. There wasn't. And perfect? It had a perfect shape, which lead me to conclude it was a pre-shaped frozen patty rather than a hand-stamped burger.
A hand-stamped burger of course can be spiced and therefore come closer to being original than one that comes out of a box of many frozen meat disks, but then, at least in the previous respect, it wouldn't be perfect. Ugh! It's hard to be everything to everybody...
These of course are minor criticisms, and not even criticisms at that. The burger is far better than any you'd get at any chain in the city. The atmosphere and signage offer more than enough eye candy to get you in there. The people are friendly, and there were enough other interesting items on the menu to get me to go back and try more.
601 Geary Street
415 474 4598
