4. Farallon

Farallon is a San Francisco "has been" that should be embarrassed to consider itself an elite restaurant in this town. I recently had dinner at Farallon and the whole experience was down right unacceptable for the price tag. FOOD. The food was mediocre, at best. The fish over cooked, temperature of one dish too cold, one dish over salted and a potato accompaniment to one of the meals was dry, hard and had to be cut apart with a knife. SERVICE. Food is one thing for a "has been" restaurant, but you gotta nail the service. These guys were armatures. We had 4 different people constantly interrupting us, constantly filling up the wine glasses when they weren't even half empty, constantly asking us if we were "ok". I like to dine... these guys wouldn't let us do it. WINE. Yes, the wine list is very nice, but the waitress suggested wine without even asking us what we would be ordering. My advice, keep your thoughts to yourself unless you really know how to pair a wine. The sommelier (or at least what we thought was the sommelier) came next ~ good guy, knew some things, but tripped up a bit when we told him we wanted a "local" wine. He then suggested a wine from Washington, Australia and one from Napa. That made me chuckle, so I had to ask him if he learned geography in school. PRICE. Outrageously over priced for the experience.