Tuna Toast

Tales From The Road: Taylor's Automatic Refresher, San Francisco, CA



Aloha- I'm back! No, I haven't been prancing around the globe or anything like that; I have just been helping to launch a daily show at work and it’s been very time consuming. I do miss blogging and have wondered if there are even any readers left, so I pledge to document my eating and cooking adventures more often from now on. Unless Britney’s fifth personality decides to go bungee jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, of course.




J, my best friend M and I traveled to San Francisco for New Year’s, and by the time we landed at around 2:00 PM, we were famished. Just one week earlier, when J and I ran through The Ferry Building for the 20 minutes we had on our car meter during our short visit at Christmas, we had noticed the hoards of people munching on fat, juicy burgers at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher and bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have time to join them. Well, here was a chance to get in on some burger action so we all three hopped into our rental car at SFO and made a beeline for Taylor’s.



We arrived to a line out the door and intoxicating smells of French fries, grilled burgers and onion rings………mmmmmmmmmm! Being in the Bay Area, Taylor’s offers something that you usually don’t find at burger joints- a nice selection of wines by the glass to wash down your juicy slab of meat with. I decided on the basic cheeseburger and an order of onion rings, while J opted for the blue cheese burger and M got the bacon cheeseburger and a side of fries. We parked it at the counter and waited while watching the cooks at work on the griddles.



I had noticed the copious mound of blue cheese that the cooks had been putting on the meat, and J was a bit overwhelmed by the ratio of it to everything else on the burger. I like blue cheese, but something so potent is better in small amounts. My burger was perfectly cooked, but the two thick slices of American cheese were still cold- again, I probably would have been better off with one slice of cheese. I know in America “bigger and more is always better” but I guess I’ve never been a big fan of that concept (unless it’s referring to a glass of wine, of course;). M was happy with her burger but I think we all decided that the fries were the real star- thin, crispy, perfectly salted and absolutely addictive. My onion rings were crisp and lovely too.




I’m glad that we finally had a chance to eat at this near- institution, but I think there are too many other eateries in San Francisco that beg to be tried before we make another trip back.

Next up: The Spotted Pig in NYC.