It strikes a nerve with me because in Massachusetts a similar sentiment is expressed by Boston-Cambridge folks about Lowell, Worcester, and other periphery cities. Its simply mot true that these places are devoid of culture snd cuisine and in the age of Yelp and Google Maps it takes almost no time to find it.
But SF has more high quality restaurants within a 20min walk of my apartment than my hometown had in total. Average restaurant quality is higher too. Just because there’s more competition.
Another fun example: in SF we have 5 grocery stores within a 10min walk. Back home the nearest grocery store was a 3min walk away, great. But the next one after that was 10min. To get to a proper supermarket size grocery store ... that’s a car trip. In SF it’s a 15min walk.
Density is wonderful. There’s economies of scale that you get at 18,400 people per square mile that you just can’t pull off at 4,500.
The ultimate test for a city is this: Do you have 5 “asian restaurants” or do you have 5 south vietnamese, 3 north vietnamese, 10 cantonese, 5 ramen, 6 japanese grill, 3 sushi, 4 dimsum, etc
For example back home we had the mexican restaurant, here you have 10 for each type of mexican food.
If it weren’t for SF’s high concentration of my industry (tech), I’d likely move to NYC, London, or Paris.
I'd say Paris and London (and most > 1m people cities in Europe and many in Asia) are also more walkable than SF.
Agreed, and I think the parent was saying that LA and Fremont are less walkable than SF, not that Tokyo is.
There are exceptional cuisine resources in San Francisco, and amazing grocery stores, like Bi-Rite and Rainbow, but as a whole the situation neither benefits from the culinary community that it used to have (how many people have moved away) or from the kind of consumer that it used to have (well to-do kids just out of Stanford or a midwest school are not people who know what buffalo mozzarella is, or why you'd want to buy it, but their money rapidly became the only money that mattered).
So here’s some perspective: My entire home country has 6 Michelin star restaurants. Of those, 1 is in the capital which is the home town I’m comparing above.
SF has 7 restaurants with 3 stars.
Places with stars don't have the economic situation I discussed: they have the money to really go beyond their surroundings.
The competition means that a lot of places scraping by in smaller cities can’t make it in a bigger city. In theory that means median quality is higher.
And even a 3-star restaurant won’t survive in a place that doesn’t get enough well-to-do visitors to sustain it.
For a more casual perspective, SF has 126 restaurants on the Michelin list (not all hve stars). My entire home country has 52.
Quality food has more to do with agriculture and supply chains than money or density per se -- good salad is not something you can buy if no one is growing it -- and more and more areas in the US have made the transition to that kind of farming and production.
Now challenging SF on grocery stores -- that's another matter. They are drawing on deep roots, there.
In fact some of the best food & drink I've had was in parts of Nebraska & Missouri and Wisconsin. You absolutely don't need to be in the city to get good food & entertainment.