wheretoeat@now.com

As much as Lyons or Paris, this is a city that lives to eat, and its restaurants are a big part of its appeal to visitors. And right now the restaurant scene is booming.

Michael Bauer, the San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic, says he can’t keep up with the openings. As dot-commers take over entire neighborhoods, restaurants follow. And these are not their parents’ generation’s Fleur de Lys or Masa’s. What people seem to crave is a place to enjoy great food and wonderful wines in an unbuttoned setting. Sound a little like Los Angeles?

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I resisted going back to old favorites like Zuni Cafe, Bizou or Fringale. I was tempted to check in at the two most talked-about serious restaurants, Fifth Floor and Gary Danko, both from veteran San Francisco chefs. But I had a different mission: to explore what’s happening in the burgeoning South of Market area (where the energy is beginning to spill over into the Mission district) and to find something fun in the Embarcadero for good measure.

From a working list of a dozen possibilities, I chose the following five. All turned out to have that rare combination--good food and a fun atmosphere. Was I just lucky, or are there simply more good restaurants per capita in the city these days? Only someone who eats out in San Francisco more frequently than I do can say, but I did leave with the impression that I had only skimmed the surface.

Gordon’s House of Fine Eats

My hands-down favorite was this restaurant in what is now known as Multimedia Gulch, between the Mission and Potrero Hill. New to me, but when I got there I realized Gordon’s is right next door to the Artaud Project, a longtime alternative arts complex. But what a change: Now unregenerate artist types share the neighborhood with upstart high-tech and media companies. On an unexpectedly warm spring day, people were sitting at the handful of tables in front, basking in the sun.

Inside, Gordon’s is a spare, loft-like space that includes a great expanse of bar, a mezzanine dining area and, in the main room, banquettes along the walls. The food is American eclectic, and American cooking never tasted as good, at least in my recent memory.

It’s a smart menu, well thought out and precisely executed. It offers “a nice matzoh ball” soup flecked with veggies and livened with a flash of heat. There’s pizza adorned with Hobbs Shore’s (my favorite bacon man) pepperoni and molten mozzarella.

I wanted the “big fat burger,” but the waiter announced they were all out.

OK, but I had to have the hand-cut thyme fries anyway. Crisp and golden and showered with sprigs of thyme, they’re everything a fry should be. And instead of the burger, I ordered the ham and Fontina sandwich, which every other person seemed to be eating. I could see why. It was about the best ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever encountered: a tall pile of thinly sliced applewood-smoked ham napped with melted Fontina and sandwiched with balsamic onions in a crisp, warm bun.

After my companions and I polished off the polenta tart sauced with a wild mushroom ragu and an elegant Japanese-style salmon seared to a flat, crisp plane, the flesh beneath translucent, we had room for only one dessert: a pretty cornmeal buttermilk shortcake with lemon curd mascarpone and strawberries. But everything else sounded terrific too, especially Gordon’s doughnut plate--chocolate-dipped raised doughnut, bitter orange doughnut, spiced twist, Pennsylvania funnel cake, chocolate beignet and fried coconut cream pie. Yow!

Foreign Cinema

The night before, I’d taken some young friends to this cross between an avant-garde art movie house and a French bistro. An unmarked door opens onto a hallway lined with flickering votive candles. You can choose to be seated either in the long, narrow dining room with display kitchen and bar or outside, where vintage art house movies are projected on a wall.

The sound of the actors’ voices comes faintly through tinny drive-in movie speakers: “I feel like reading Goethe tonight,” said Jules (in subtitles, but the French was audible). “I lent it to Jim,” came the reply from the marvelous Jeanne Moreau. Mais oui, the film of the night was “Jules and Jim.”

In the dark, with the flickering candles, the whispered voices, the smell of garlic and thyme, the images of the film floating across the broad wall, it felt like a dream. What’s strange is, once the film stopped, the spell was broken.

Oddly, the food is not nearly as hip as the setting. A carrot and fennel soup was bland. Caramelized tiger shrimp didn’t sing with freshness, and the tomatoes Provencal underneath them tasted like something straight from a can. But a crispy sweetbread and tongue salad in a spunky vinaigrette tasted as true and authentic as something from the wonderful Bistro Jeanty in Napa Valley. Grilled rainbow trout amandine with lemon caper butter sauce reminded me that I’d forgotten about this old-fashioned classic, it’s been so long since I’ve seen it on a menu. For dessert, there was a nice chocolate po^t de creme with a dollop of softly whipped cream on top.

Cafe? Yes, an excuse to linger in the garden as the next round of diners drifted in. We got to hear one of the most off-key “Happy Birthdays” ever, offered with great hilarity by a table of Gen X-ers.

Pinxtos

Just across the street from another Mission hot spot, the Slanted Door, this newish Spanish Basque restaurant has much of the same feel in its edgy, warehouse-inspired architecture. One wall of the long, narrow space is covered with a collage mural depicting a knife-wielding chef, bullfighting and Spain, all tossed together. There’s an inviting bar made of tiny glazed green tiles. Tabletops are faded paint-streaked boards sealed in clear resin.

On a weekday night the place was packed, yet the host was patient when I called, twice, to change my reservation.

The crowd was wildly eclectic--a lanky guy in beret and ponytail, a Rubenesque woman with snaky tresses, dot-commers, artists both real and manque, college kids and grandparents.

First came the bread, so good that two people at the table commented on it. Turned out it was from our own La Brea Bakery, shipped partly baked and finished off in Pinxtos’ ovens.

The best strategy is to order a slew of little dishes, or tapas, and then a few main courses to share. Look for the fleshy crimson piquillo peppers stuffed with salt cod and cream; escalivada, something like a Catalan caponata of chilled marinated eggplant, roasted sweet peppers and onions with anchovy and olives; and exqueixada, “broken” or flaked salt cod with grated tomato, garlic and lemon. Unfortunately, the salt cod had been soaked too long in water to leach out its saltiness, and it had little flavor.

The fish balls were delicious, in a pink shrimp and piquillo bisque. A rosy, perfectly cooked pork tenderloin in mustard sauce was the best entree; escabeche de conejo--a whole, bony rabbit in a vinegar sauce--looked more steamed than browned. But the sides! I’m still dreaming of those gorgeous piquillo peppers sauteed with garlic.

Spanish cuisine doesn’t get the respect it deserves, so it’s a particular treat here, because Pinxtos is fun, like a hip place in Barcelona or San Sebastian.

Chaya Brasserie

The next day I walked through my old stamping ground in North Beach and from there to the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street. I still can’t get over how the water is so much more a presence now that the Embarcadero freeway has been torn down, a casualty of the 1989 earthquake. The new Chaya there takes full advantage of the view.

It’s a gorgeous space, with a long zinc-topped bar, Thonet chairs and, in the far dining room, a sleek blond sushi bar. From the banquettes near the window you get an enthralling view of the Bay Bridge and the water.

The three 70ish women seated next to my table trilled and cooed over the view--and they lived in San Francisco.

Chef Shigefumi Tachibe, who was one of the architects of Franco-Japanese cooking, first at Le Petit Chaya and then at Chaya Brasserie and Chaya Venice in L.A., heads up the kitchen here.

Similar to but not a carbon copy of Chayas in L.A., the menu celebrates local ingredients, especially what’s available every Saturday at the farmers market at the foot of Market Street. Plump little Dungeness crab cakes were lightly rolled in broken kataif--a shredded fine pastry dough--to give them some crunch. The crab was virtually raw, barely warmed through, all its flavor intact, paired with slivered Belgian endive salad in a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette.

Chaya’s signature grilled chicken with Dijon mustard sauce was terrific, a big notch above the same dish I’ve eaten in L.A. The difference? The bird (Hoffman Ranch) and a beautifully balanced sauce.

Niman Ranch roasted pork tenderloin with sauteed wild mushrooms and a gracefully nuanced Port sauce was a standout too.

Azie

I’d saved what I thought would be best on my list for last: the new Asian fusion restaurant from Lulu’s chef Jody Denton. In fact, Azie is right next door, but what a different place. Where Lulu celebrates robust country French cooking, Azie reinvents French Asian cooking, and in a dramatic two-story space.

My guest, a poet who moonlights at a wine shop, was already in the bar when my husband and I arrived, marveling at the number of good small producers and hard-to-find bottles.

We were seated upstairs, on sort of a mezzanine decorated with sculptural rice paper lamps and splashes of color, mainly red.

The a la carte menu seemed more exciting than the tasting menu, so that’s how we ordered. Starters were impressive: a stack of round ravioli filled with foie gras; a terrific beef carpaccio with a pert little salad of pea shoots and herbs drenched in lemon grass and lime. And a lyrical lobster, coconut and galangal soup, the fragrant broth poured from a Japanese iron teapot over lobster morsels and shiitake mushrooms. The presentation was stunning.

Main courses, however, were uneven, ranging from a lovely spice-smoked quail in caramelized ginger sauce to John Dory cooked two ways, both dull. Still, those first courses were exciting enough that I’d go back in a heartbeat.

I’ve already generated another long list of places to try on my next visit, including two, Belon and Ponzu, in another up-and-coming neighborhood: the Tenderloin, if you can believe it.

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GUIDEBOOK

Appetizing Adventures Around SoMa

Azie, 826 Folsom St.; telephone (415) 538-0918, fax (415) 538-0916, Internet https://www.restaurantlulu.com. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Dinner appetizers $7 to $20; entrees $21 to $30; tasting menu $65.

Chaya Brasserie, 132 Embarcadero; tel. (415) 777-8688, fax (415) 247-9952. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Dinner appetizers $8 to $14; entrees $20 to $27.

Foreign Cinema, 2534 Mission St.; tel. (415) 648-7600, Internet https://www.foreigncinema.com. Dinner only; closed Monday. Appetizers $6 to $10; entrees $13 to $19. Call for movie schedule.

Gordon’s House of Fine Eats, 500 Florida St.; tel. (415) 861-8900, fax (415) 241-7325. Lunch and dinner. Dinner small plates $5 to $12; large plates $8 to $28.

Pinxtos, 557 Valencia St.; tel. (415) 565-0207, fax (415) 565-0249. Dinner only. Appetizers $5 to $8; entrees $10 to $18.

Also keep in mind the following, some of which show their work on the Web site https://www.sanfranciscochefs.com:

Bizou, 598 4th St.; tel. (415) 543-2222, fax (415) 543-2999. Earthy French-Mediterranean cooking from Loretta Keller.

Delfina, 3621 18th St.; tel. (415) 552-4055. This wildly popular Italian trattoria has added a few more tables (and a place to wait for a table) by expanding to the space next door.

Fifth Floor, Palomar Hotel, 12 4th St. (at Market); tel. (415) 348-1555. Dinner only. George Morrone, who opened the posh seafood restaurant Aqua, is back at the stoves at this new spot.

Fringale, 570 4th St.; tel. (415) 543-0573. Gerald Hiroygen’s lovely little French bistro has been a bulwark of the SoMa dining scene since 1991.

Hawthorne Lane, 22 Hawthorne St.; tel. (415) 777-9779. David and Anne Gingrass, who were opening chefs at Postrio, launched this vibrant California restaurant about five years ago.

Ristorante Ecco, 101 S. Park St.; tel. (415) 495-3291. Contemporary Italian cooking from chef Benjamin de Vries.

Slanted Door, 584 Valencia St.; tel. (415) 861-8032. Vietnamese cooking in a sleek, contemporary setting.

Zuni Cafe, 1658 Market St.; tel. (415) 552-2522. Judy Rodgers’ lusty French-California cooking. The roast chicken for two with Champagne vinaigrette bread salad is a must.

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S. Irene Virbila is The Times’ restaurant critic and a former Bay Area resident.