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My friend Chris took a date to this restaurant in North Beach last year that advertised “live music nights.” Sounded romantic – Italian food, live music, good vibe. What he got was a guy with an acoustic guitar playing Ed Sheeran covers so loud they couldn’t hear each other talk. They left after the main…

My brother tried to do his anniversary dinner at some trendy spot in the Mission last year, and it was a disaster. The restaurant was packed, the noise level was insane, the waiter forgot they were celebrating anything, and the food came out at the same rushed pace as every other night. His wife spent…

My friend Rachel went to this Italian restaurant in Nob Hill last December and ordered the caprese salad because she loves tomatoes and mozzarella. What came out was sad – pale pink tomatoes that tasted like water, mozzarella that was fine, basil that looked tired. She ate maybe three bites and gave up. “Why would…

My neighbor Luca is from Milan, and he spent his first year in San Francisco confused about American breakfast. “Why is everything so heavy?” he’d ask. “Eggs and bacon and pancakes at 7 AM? Who wants this?” He missed the Italian way of starting the day – espresso and a cornetto at the bar, maybe…

My friend Tony’s dad is from Naples, and he has this thing where he tastes pasta sauce at restaurants and immediately knows if it came from a jar. He can tell within one bite. We took him to this place in the Marina that claimed to have “authentic homemade marinara,” and he took one taste…

My coworker Maria grew up in Palermo, and she spent her first two years in San Francisco complaining that nobody here knew how to make real Sicilian food. “It’s all northern Italian,” she’d say. “Where’s the caponata? Where’s the arancini that doesn’t taste like cafeteria food? Where’s pasta with sardines?” Then someone from her Italian…

My friend Marcus took a client to some supposedly fancy Italian restaurant in Union Square last year, trying to impress them. He ordered the Caesar salad because the menu said it was “prepared tableside,” which sounded elegant. The waiter wheeled out a cart, tossed some lettuce with pre-made dressing from a squeeze bottle, and that…

My friend Sarah ordered food delivery from an Italian restaurant in North Beach through a third-party app. The driver got lost for 30 minutes. The food arrived cold. The pasta had congealed into a solid mass. The containers had leaked sauce all over the bag. The salad was warm and wilted from being packed with…

My friend Tom tried planning his brother’s 30th birthday dinner for 12 people at an Italian restaurant in North Beach. He called ahead to make a reservation. They said “sure, no problem.” But when the group arrived, they were seated at two separate tables across the restaurant from each other, the service was terrible because…

My friend Tom tried ordering Italian food online from a restaurant in North Beach. The website loaded slowly on his phone. The menu photos were missing. Customization options were confusing or didn’t work. The checkout process crashed twice. After 20 frustrating minutes, he gave up and called instead. “Why do restaurants bother with online ordering…