Slanted Door is SF's top-grossing independent restaurant

From restaurantbusinessonline.com 100 Top-grossing Independent Restaurants

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Right up there with Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar.

I’m surprised Koi Palace or even Yank Sing aren’t on that list somewhere, given their size, volume and pricing, though granted YS doesn’t do dinner… A lot of the figures are “guestimates.” I wonder how complete the reporting is.

A source of mine who works on the system they’re using for booking says they’re the highest grossing in CA. There’s one other west coast restaurant higher on their list, but the numbers for SD are pure estimates by the magazines and probably low.

If wine is included in the gross, Slanted Door would come out ahead of YS and Koi. Slanted Door has a huge list that includes prestige bottles and enough clientele on expense accounts. We go once a year for our anniversary (except one year we went to Sir and Star, big mistake) and usually spend $200-300 in 2 hours or less. I know Slanted Door isn’t very popular with this group, but their shaking beef is the best I’ve had, and I love their Dungeness crab noodles and corn (seasonal). There aren’t a ton of Asian crab preps where you don’t have to shell it yourself.

thanks!

Felice, in the FWIW Dept.,

For me, it’s not about its popularity . . . I used to love the Slanted Door while it was still in the Mission. Then, when it moved to the South Beach neighborhood, I never thought it was as good – but chalked it up to its “temporary” location, and thought it would get back to form once it set up shop in the Ferry Building. For me, what got better was the bar, not necessarily the food.

And, to quote Yogi Berra, the Slanted Door is a perfect example of “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.” Or, to paraphrase Fun Boy Three, “The lunatics tourists have taken over the asylum.”

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You are probably right about Yank Sing. Koi Palace, however, has a full liquor license and it’s more than the seafood that gets XO-sauced there. It also has twice the seating capacity of TSD.

how are they defining “independent”? abe & louis’ in boston was purchased several years ago by the tavistock group. tavistock owns HUNDREDS of stores.

never mind. i scrolled down. but still.

I never went to the mission location, only to Brannan, so I don’t have the same let-down feeling. There are only a handful of dishes there that I think are worth ordering, but those dishes are best in class. The tourists don’t bother me, and I agree the place is overrun with tourists. I also agree that a fair portion of their menu is crap, we usually order one dish (usually appetizer or crudo) we haven’t tried before and it’s usually not very good. That doesn’t prevent me from returning though.