Palo Alto food scene is far from being able to compete with San Francisco. There are probably less than 5 restaurants if not 3 that would be at the level of an average restaurant in NY or SF. Palo Alto has many great things, but a world class cuisine is not one of them.

I live in Palo Alto. I enjoy the restaurant scene in San Francisco so much better simply because of the tremendous variety up there. There are only a handful of restaurants in Palo Alto I enjoy visiting regularly, but even then I don't want to visit the same ones every week because they start tasting the same after a while. In San Francisco, there are so many different cuisines represented (by quality restaurants) that I could easily eat something completely different more than once a week for a year or more.

another foodie, resident - Thanks for your thoughts. I agree with you, resident. I have my favorites down here, but am constantly trying new places in San Francisco.

Elena - I wonder if some of the difference is the lack of an available employee base. I remember reading a while back that the founder of Calafia commented on how challenging it is to hire people in Palo Alto.

palo alto resident - Interesting point. Do you mean hiring chefs? I'm sure most aspiring chefs on the West Coast flock to San Francisco and L.A., not Palo Alto...

Elena - I wasn't thinking of the chefs, rather all the support staff that a good restaurant requires. If you know that rents are expensive and staff is difficult to hire, you might not choose that location for a restaurant. Just wondering if that comes into play.

I doubt SF has much to fear of restaurant competition from any of the (comparatively) small-town restaurant clusters of the peninsula and S. Bay, of which there are several.

On the other hand, the larger phenomenon of SF restaurateurs preferring to open on the peninsula, and some of the peculiar current economics of this, got a notable Chronicle article earlier this year.

Web Link

Note especially Frank Klein's comments predicting shake-out of inexperienced restaurateurs in a current climate of peak restaurant rental prices. (So sharp a peak, a popular downtown-MV Chinese restaurant closed this year after its lease came up for renewal at three times the previous monthly rent.)

20 years ago, people often complained online that Palo Alto, for all its appropriate environment and residents who could afford to eat out, conspicuously lacked a restaurant scene. Stars was the famous high-end place, and didn't last. PA had long been better known for humble local-grown chains and neighborhood cafes (Stukey's, Ken's, Round Table Pizza -- a Menlo Park invention). That has changed considerably: neighborhoods like University and California ave's and the totally re-born Town & Country near Sranford now feature independent, innovative restaurants with range and variety.

palo alto resident, Max - Very good points; I appreciate you commenting. There's a lot more at play than just good food or attracting talented chefs. There's increasingly high rents (in both Palo Alto and San Francisco), city ordinances to get through, challenges hiring staff, etc. Makes it pretty clear why all these already successful, well-established SF places can easily make the move down here.

To anyone else interested in the topic: the Chronicle article that Max posted is worth a read.

Nice idea, but PA's food will never surpass that found in San Francisco. It's simply not going to happen.

Also, "palo alto resident" raised a good point that I too have heard from restaurateurs and even restaurant employees in Santa Clara County.

Because of its extremely high restaurant count in a compact geography (several hubdred thousand restaurant seats in a city of only 47 square miles, just twice the land area of Palo Alto), SF has a uniquely large and experienced pool of restaurant workers to draw on, many of whom choose it as a career.