SFO Airport Eats
 

Very useful - thanks

I enjoy the veggie burgers at Burger Joint. Cat Cora's is good too :). Thanks for this!

Food at SFO is the envy of other airports.

Notice how few national chains there are, and most notably, the venues aren't owned/operated by one of the major airport players, slapping the franchise name on the sign. In fact, SFO spends a lot more effort/money in having to negotiate individual leases with each tenant instead of, i.e., one master lease with HMS Host for every square inch of food service in the entire airport.

Perhaps in the US (not difficult) but SFO - at least in T3 and G terminals - lacks anywhere you can have a seated leisurely meal while awaiting a flight, especially a red-eye. All the places are basically fuelling stations, with (somewhat better) fast-food fuel but little or no atmosphere. Ebisu is the honorable exception, but even there you are eating in a food court.

T1 is one of the worst terminals of any airport in the country. And the food is terrible, with Max's being the only decent place but lines can be very long to get the food and even longer just to pay.

The link to eater story talks about PIQ - well its outside of security

After a recent visit to the VX terminal at EWR, the dreggiest dregs of SFO are like a gourmet paradise!

For me, if I'm going to or from SFO any time where breakfast or lunch would normally be served, and I can set aside the time (and have a car for transport) I'd rather BY FAR eat at JoAnne's Cafe in South San Francisco than any sort of airport eatery. To me, it's a destination restaurant. Obviously, this is impractical for eating during a layover, however.

I find it curious what people expect from airport restaurants. Maybe it is just that I have been conditioned into accepting lower restaurant standards at airports than elsewhere, but consider the following analogy.

If you went to a restaurant that had live background music, would you expect to hear Van Cliburn playing classical music or Tony Bennett or Paul McCartney singing? Could an average restaurant afford to pay a top musician?

Restaurants are very difficult businesses to run in general. There is little demand for a high quality dinner venue at an airport. Add those two together and a business person would have to think long and hard before opening up a good sit-down dinner restaurant at an airport. I'm not saying it couldn't ever work, but it certainly would be a very risky business venture.

T1 is the worst of the terminals at SFO hands down, but it definitely isn't the worst in a major US airport. Excluding the outdated runways, SFO is definitely one of the better major airports in the US as a whole. Once they redo T1, it'll be even better.

I presume that this response was aimed at my observation that you couldn't get a decent sit down dinner at SFO - rather you had to eat "fuel" in a service station atmosphere. It's clearly correct to state you won't find the French Laundry, or any Michelin starred restaurant at an airport - completely out of place. But why not somewhere where you can sit down and eat a properly prepared meal without being jostled. Most airports in the world manage such a thing and SFO, with its bank of red-eyes leaving, is particularly suited to it.

I wonder what business people (not locals) do when they are taking a red-eye. For me, I leave the office at about 6 or 6:30. I've already checked out of the hotel so I have my bags with me and don't have a hotel room to go to. I don't want to eat until 7:30 or 8:00 at the earliest. There's not time to have a nice dinner in SF before I have to leave for the airport - and I don't drive after drinking, so I couldn't enjoy a glass of wine with it anyway. So the obvious thing to do is to go to the airport from the office and have dinner there, arriving say 7:30 and through security at 8:00. Perfect timing for a leisurely dinner. But the offerings at least in T3 and International G simply don't provide anything suitable. Trumped up fast food is what's on offer, not leisurely slow food.

What is lacking is what was originally planned when the International terminal opened. It was intended to be a destination with dining that even locals would want to patronize (with some parking validations, etc.), and there was even (IIRC) a "fine" Chinese restaurant landside. 9/11 changed the dynamic of this, as non-ticketed pax would no longer be permitted airside. Also, SFO tends to be a lot more O/D than many other airports.

I don't often buy food @ SFO because I'm typically starting a long int'l trip, have lounge access, and will be fed well-enough onboard. But I do note that in T2 (50-59), Cat Cora's place or Vino Volo provides a nice setting to have some decent food and wine, and in fact, the last time I had a redeye on VX, I had some wine and tasty snackies at Vino Volo.

I very rarely fly out of T3 or G anymore, so I have no idea what the current array of offerings may be. Hopefully when the E pier is redone, the selection will improve.

T2 has some great choices. I usually grab sushi from Wakaba to take onboard. But that said, SFO food and drink is very pricey even for airport standards. I spent $12.61 recently before a morning flight on a bottle of orange juice, a double espresso, and a standard 6 oz. container of yogurt.

I always have lounge access now (thanks to FT). When I don't, I'm flying short haul out of OAK. So I'm not real current. Originally, the leases stipulated that the prices were to be the same as their real restaurants & I found them reasonable. Maybe they had to scrap that after the downturn a couple years back. Big fan of the roast chicken at Andale.