Seven top spots for exploring the Bay Area's food obsession

I have visited regions where the food is as good. There are many places where the cuisine is better value for money. (Unexpectedly high prices will be a feature of many articles from this holiday.) But I've never been anywhere with as rabidly enthusiastic a food culture as the Bay Area and its neighbouring wine region.

Farmers markets have produce of astonishing quality, displayed with the care given to precious gems.  Menus at even basic restaurants go into specifics about ingredients and where they come from; local and organic are common standards. Waiters and waitresses can dive to copious detail about their food and talk intelligently about wine and beer pairing. Groceries and small shops stock gourmet ingredients; the fresh morels and other exotic mushrooms I saw stacked in a shop in the Ferry Building were only equalled in my experience by high-end food markets in Barcelona and Paris. Food trucks and corner delis can be as fancy as high-end restaurants, and often have people queuing around the block. They take allergies seriously here; it's never been so easy to get around my husband's tomato allergy, despite the frequency of that ingredient on menus. (And of servers having difficulty catching his English pronunciation the first time around.) Yelp and OpenTable show that consumers are as passionate as providers; reviews are copious, frequent and serious.

In short, as long as you budget for it, this is an amazing place for a culinary holiday.

Is there a San Francisco cuisine? A handful of things stand out. Unsurprisingly for its bayside location, top-quality seafood turns up everywhere. The sourdough lives up to its reputation; its tangy zing incorporated into almost all baked goods. And they're obsessed with tri tip, a cut of beef I'd never heard of until this trip. (It's the triangular end of the sirloin, usually cut into steaks or ground for mince but here, elevated to a bbq art form.) Sadly for any American who grew up in the '70s, there was no sign of Rice-a-Roni, "the San Francisco treat". Whatever they're serving, everyone is obsessed by quality and trying to be out at the front of the next trend. I saw a bewildering number of unique cocktails.

After that, there's little commonality. San Francisco is an immigrant city, thus a place of ethnic cuisines and fusions. (A Scandi-French place was probably our best meal there.) Up in the wine country, it was all about the quality of ingredients and earning the adjective "gourmet", whether you're cooking for a Michelin star or assembling two-inch-high sandwiches with catchy names, served on luxury breads holding artistic combinations of meats and vegetables melded with complex home-made condiments.

From simple lunches to the most sophisticated dinners, the prices were as gourmet as the food. A sandwich and a drink could be as much as $25, a nicer lunch more than $50 per person, and dinners (with alcohol, of course) regularly approached $100 each. And that's before the tip, which Americans now recommend at between 18% and 20%. It takes a lot to give a Londoner sticker shock, but the facts spoke for themselves: we could eat and drink cheaper almost anywhere in Europe. (And that's before our currency tumbled by 30%. But we won't talk politics here...)

With the exception of our monumental blow-out at The French Laundry, which will get its own entry, here are the places I'd tip for a visit.

IN SAN FRANCISCO
Volta - Start with an experienced management team, infuse a French brasserie with Scandinavian influences, design a bright, modern space, then staff it all with friendly servers who can offer top wine picks, and you get the best meal we had in San Francisco. The dishes were all fresh interpretations of familiar classics, presented beautifully. I started with the skagen, a delicious Scandinavian take on prawn salad, spiked with tangy dill and horseradish sauce, given added depth with white fish roe and crunch with white radish. On to Swedish meatballs, given an elegant presentation and gourmet sides. I was excited to see princess cake on the dessert menu (pictured above), something I've made from recipe but never had from a professional kitchen. This was a deconstructed version, giving a radically modern appearance to the old-world combo of vanilla cake, marzipan and raspberry.

One Market - An upscale grill featuring top quality fish, meat and fresh produce in an early 20th century office building at the start of Market Street facing the Ferry Building. I'd guess the high ceilings and broad, arched windows once belonged to a bank. Now it's an elegantly-designed space where diners get plenty of room at big tables with comfortable leather chairs, and lots of stimulation from the piano player and the flames of the charcoal grill visible in the open kitchen. My husband clearly won the starter round with a lightly-smoked trout on a fluffy potato rosti, topped with a gently poached egg. But both of our fish dishes (scallops, sea bream) paled in comparison to our friend's pork tenderloin across the table. I should have paid more attention to their web site. When a restaurant leads with the image of one dish, it's a good hint to order it.

Tartine Bakery - Given its lofty reputation (Tartine is often credited with sparking the current craze for home-made sourdough) and the number of people who told me I must eat here, I was shocked at

how tiny this place is. It's a simple corner bakery in the Mission District, with about eight tables inside and a handful more on the pavement outside. No alcohol is allowed on the street, however, so if you want beer with your lunch you'll have to be patient. Given that you've probably already stood in a 30- to 40-person queue just to order something, you've proven that trait before you order.  Things move fast, and at least half the customers are clearly locals coming in for bread, cakes and breakfast pastries to take away. This is the place that introduced us to the Bay Area's fascination with the gourmet sandwich. The $14 average price seems steep, but they're enormous and could easily be shared by two. My pastrami, piled thick on buttery grilled sourdough with spicy mustard and horseradish, oozing with grilled gruyere, was exquisite. And the other half made a fine breakfast the next morning. We split a lemon meringue tart with delicate, crisp pastry, explosively flavourful filling and a showy top. It's obvious why the locals queue up.

Sears Fine Foods - Evidently, this place is a San Francisco institution that's been famous since the 1930s. We had no idea ... everyone was jet lagged and it appeared the most practical choice with available tables near our hotel. The cavernous interior does indeed have an old world family restaurant feel, and the menu is one of those broad, bit-of-everything crowd pleasers. I'd classify it as "generic American favourites," but they had a few San Francisco specialties. Most notably Cioppino, the Italian "classic" mix of fish in a spicy tomato stew. Turns out it's not Italian at all, but invented by San Francisco fishermen who would whip up a communal feast from their scraps, inviting everyone to "chip in". Sung out, in their heavy Italian accents, that became "Chee-oh-peen-oh".

IN THE WINE COUNTRY
Sunflower Caffe - One of the many gastronomic options along the large square known as Sonoma
Plaza, order at the counter from chalked up menu and head for the shady courtyard with the splashing fountain to await your food. The menu is a gourmet take on salads and sandwiches, changing regularly to take advantage of local produce. My perfectly-seared Ahi tuna was a Californian version of a salad Nicoise; a friend had an imaginative take on hot dogs served with home-made kimchee. Nice house wines, of course.

Zazu Kitchen - We had a lot of fine meals on this trip, but if there's ONE restaurant I wish we had back home, it's this one. We'd be regulars. Zazu is a temple to pork. From sides of bacon on view in a glass cabinet to succulent burgers cut with ground pork to a wickedly satisfying bacon Bloody Mary, this place is a pig-lover's fantasy. Everything was lip-smackingly good. The waitress was deeply knowledgeable about their farm-to-table policies and clever with matching food to very local wines and artisan beers. The space is modern and functional, crafted from an old warehouse building and flooded with light. Zazu is located in a district of Sebastopol, California called The Barlow. Once a cluster of industrial buildings given over to fruit packing and shipping, it's been re-developed as an upscale dining and shopping district. If I were back in this area I'd make a beeline here; everything looked worthy of further exploration. (Head across the street to Woodfour for a fantastic variety of artisan beers. You can sample a five-beer flight for $10, one of the few deals of our trip.)