AMUSIX said:
edit: Belgand: you're insane if you're trying to suggest that you can't find proper british foods in San Francisco, and you're batshit crazy to suggest that good cheese can't be easily found. Of all the cities in the US, San Francisco is one of the most epicurially diverse and cultured. An elitist attitude to have, but one well deserved.
You've mistaken me. I meant I couldn't find either within one block of my house. I live on the wasteland that is the extreme southwest of the city so there's not really much nearby within walking distance. Aside from the most absolute basics almost everything requires a bus/train/bike/car trip. There is a grocery store near me, what used to be an Albertson's actually so it's a pretty large, typical American grocery store. Except that Albertson's pulled out before I moved in and a year later it was reopened as an Asian grocery. Due to this they don't really carry cheese aside from a few unpleasant bags of pre-shredded Kraft and the like and that's tucked over into a corner.
That said while we are pretty epicurially diverse there are still plenty of things that we get to bitch about all the time: lack of decent Jewish deli food, not much in the way of quality subs, the pain in trying to find a decent Italian place that isn't a tourist trap, quite a challenge finding good thin crust NY-style pizza, same goes for bagels, not much in the way of Greek food (at least, I'm not finding much of it... perhaps I need to look harder), and, personally, as a Kansas City native I have been unable to find proper barbecue with the most lauded place in town (Memphis Minnie's) having I can only really consider to be "adequate" at best and with the worst excuse for sauce I can imagine (needless to say it's run by one of those "sauce is the devil!" types who it seems just doesn't understand KC style where it's always served wet).
British food and cheese (is it pricey? is it trendy? is it seen as elegant? can it be boutique, organic, local, free-range, and just about everything else to jack it up to the stratosphere? of
course we're awash in it) are, of course, amazingly common and I've been lucky enough to find an actual old-school family-owned butcher shop that actually charges the sorts of prices you'd expect to pay (unlike almost everywhere else where they seem to think they get to rape you and sell an aforementioned boutique service... especially now that most grocery stores don't even have a meat counter, let alone a full-service one or meat worth eating) and is located fairly nearby.
So, yeah, I know I can find it, I was just bitching that it's not nearby or at the TJ's/Safeway compound where I tend to do most of my shopping during the week (doubly so now that my car hasn't been trustworthy for the past few weeks) and that, well, I wanted a bacon sandwich right NOW.
