Restaurant fatigue

Am I bored or just jaded? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. All I know is that since our fantastic meal at Acquerello, I cannot get excited about any restaurant we've been to since. Granted, we don't eat out all that often, and even rarer do we leave Castro-Noe-Mission radius. But lately it seems like even our old standbys haven't been cutting it.

A few weeks ago, we had a disappointing experience at our beloved Incanto. So upsetting was it that I did something I rarely do: I wrote a letter to the owner. He graciously responded and was sufficiently apologetic, so we will return eventually, but it shook our confidence. A recent return to my longtime fave Cafe Claude confirmed for the second contiguous time that they have slid into mediocrity. We tried to be fair-minded about Fresca on 24th Street, having previously been the victims of the most ludicrously incompetent wait service in the history of restaurantdom. This time was not the worst ever, but the service was decidedly weak, and this was for a 2 pm lunch on a Sunday when scarcely six tables were occupied. Recent visits to our regular sushi joint Hamano have been perfectly lackluster as well.

Restaurant after restaurant, meal after meal has left us unsatisfied. Has Acquerello spoiled us, or is everyone else really that bad? Where can a couple of hungry and only slightly finicky guys go for a soul-nourishing, emotionally pleasing meal experience?

All hope is not lost, I suppose. On Pink Saturday we ended up going with our friend Kathleen back to one of our very longtime haunts, Il Cantuccio. When we lived a couple of blocks from there, we would go on practically a weekly basis. But then, they got rated best of in the Guardian, prices began to creep up, quality began to slip ... and we stopped going. But this last visit was just like old times. I look forward to returning.