The state of the plate

When it comes to dining out, is San Francisco becoming a Valhalla or a Vegas with hills? Josh Sens looks back on a confounding 12 months of meals and takes the measure of a region and its restaurants.

By Josh Sens, Contributing Writer, San Francisco Magazine

Whatever its effect on other industries, the subprime mortgage crisis has yet to result in a subprime rib crisis. New York strip is selling briskly, too.

This became apparent a few weeks back, when I finally made my way to Epic Roasthouse, Pat Kuleto’s splashy steakhouse by the bay. I sat in a broad-backed leather chair in the bar upstairs, carving a slab of meat large enough to feed a puma and feeling like I should have worn a business suit. It was midweek at 8 p.m., and the place was packed: in every corner, postwork happy people; in every hand, a drink. Through a window to the east, the Bay Bridge reached out gracefully toward Treasure Island. To the west, in fast-rising Rincon Hill, gleaming residential towers poked their heads up through the fog.