Cafe for all Season's

Café for all Season’s
150 West Portal Avenue – San Francisco
415-665-0900

Located in the heart of a village within San Francisco that seems a lifetime away, yet is a five minute ride on Muni Metro from downtown. It’s an unpretentious, almost bland diner type place that enjoys a large clientele of blue rinsed women of a certain age, but then everything in this neighborhood has that in common. Café for all Season’s has been around a long time, and the upholstered dining room chairs show if with their threadbare fabric. At the same time there is a cleanliness and earnestness that makes this place a welcome return to simpler and better times. The burger is upstanding and also simple with good meat cooked as ordered and served on a toasted baguette with a paper cup of tartar sauce, iceberg lettuce, hot house tomato and institutional pickles joined by two thin slices of red onion and it makes for a hearty and good burger. The place is decorated the way your grandmother’s house might have been in Eisenhower America of the 1950’s and they offer polyester napkins that move mistakes rather than absorb them. They offer a full American style menu and the burger is good but in no way exceptional.

The matchstick French fries are delicious and they claim they use no trans fat oils to cook them. They’re always piping hot when served too which shows good management and staff training although it’s not so obvious in water or coffee refills. They serve breakfast or brunch, lunch and dinner and the prices are moderate. Wine and beer and fountain drinks and homemade desserts which are overpriced and average are available at the restaurant and a deli and ice cream shop with their name up the street. A friendly and warm neighborhood place that serves a good burger.