In a few days I'm going to
do a blog on several good restaurants in San Francisco and later this
month I'm going to do one on Michael Bauer the San Francisco Chronicle
food critic.
Before I do either, I want to point out two things. First, I won't write a review that will fill up my favorite secret restaurants. Second, understand that my taste is straight-forward.
I
had little interest in "good" food before the late 1970s except as
feed. By the late 1970s I was spending enough time in Japan to make
friends who took me to important Japanese restaurants and monasteries.
That was the point of change. Over the next few years in Japan, I had
enough extraordinary meals to know what great food is. I didn't have a
good meal outside of Japan until Thomas Keller opened his French
Laundry in Yountville in 1994. I ate at the French Laundry every eight
weeks for two years while the prices were reasonable and I could get a
60 day reservation. 
I only evaluate food relative to the high Japanese standards and the French Laundry.
If your taste was not shaped by Japanese cuisine, you probably won't understand what I'm talking about. Without any question, I will state categorically that the best food in the world is in Japan. You may not get it in ordinary Japanese restaurants, but you will in the best ryokans and exclusive high end art-food restaurants.
Two
examples to prove my point. One, Japanese food uses roughly three times
the variety of species in cooking of any other cuisine. That truth is
evident in the Iron Chef TV program (Japanese) which is based on the
ingenuity of chefs in making great meals spontaneously from at hand
ingredients; every imaginable ingredient.
Two, you and everyone you know has added an appreciation for a dozen fish species to your taste repertoire since the 1970s thanks to the spread of sushi. Japanese cuisine.
Now you know the taste basis on which I judge restaurants.