About the one-way car rental, it is often *much* cheaper renting LAX-SFO than SFO-LAX. In fact sometimes it is zero cost (no rental charge, never mind no drop-off charge). This is because most people do as you propose -- rent one-way southbound -- and cars accumulate in SoCal needing to be moved back north. Of course the southbound drive is on the ocean side of the road, fwiw.

There is a trick to how to book the French Laundry, but I'm not about to reveal it, except that you can figure it out for yourself if you think about how they do bookings. Still there are 1000 people vying for every seat there.