I’ve written previously that Mackie and I enjoy watching Check Please! and about our best find to date, The Hard Knox Café. SF Eater can take their snarky [R.I.P., B.C.] comments (they called the show Live Action Yelp) and shove up them up their condescending behinds. Check Please! don’t suck; Yelp do.

Mini-reviews of a few more places we discovered on Check Please!, in order of preference:

1. After Hard Knox, our favorite find has been Old Krakow, a Polish (betcha didn't guess that) restaurant in West Portal. As one might expect from spotting Poland on a map, the food is heavy. But if you’re looking for some rib-stickin’ chow, this is the place for you. Marinated grilled pork chops (Mackie's pick), grilled pork cutlets, breaded pork cutlets (all $17.95) – we’ve had ‘em all and they’re all good. Sides aren’t real creative – you’ll get mashed or sautéed potatoes, steamed veges and maybe some sauerkraut, depending on the dish. Nothing fancy, just good Eastern European comfort food. For a little more variety, try the Polish goulash ($17.95). Chunks of spiced beef with onions, peppers and gravy served over potato dumplings. They can keep the beet salad – the only beets I’ve ever truly like were my mother’s pickled beets – but the rest of the dish rocks. For dessert, Mackie recommends the cheese crepe. The sweet cheese filling reminds Mackie of mascarpone meets cottage cheese meets ricotta (Mackie's words) and the fruit topping is fresh. Although she's a whipped cream fiend, Mackie says 86 it or get it on the side for this dish...it's rich enough without.

2. Mackie and I diverge on The Blue Plate, a New American in the Mission. Blue Plate is located on what I consider to be the most interesting culinary block in the City (Mission between Valencia and 29th). I've tried Blue Plate, Mi Lindo Peru, Jasmine Tea House, El Zocolo and Inkas and have enjoyed them all. Good Frikin' Chicken is also supposed to be good but I've never had the pleasure. Moreover, head another block down Mission and you're at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack while if you veer off of Mission a half-block down 29th you'll get to The Front Porch. Some mighty good eatin' in a small area. Oh, you want me to tell you about Blue Plate's food? That's kinda hard 'cuz they do a new menu pretty much every day. I think of it as comfort food with a twist, e.g., mac and cheese made with Spanish goat cheese, multi-meat meat loaf, steak and potatoes with black truffle vinaigrette. I like the little twists but Mackie thinks they screw up what would otherwise be a good thing. And that was before she saw the food inspection score of 78 (how does an upscale restaurant let that happen???). One tip — if you sit at the counter or elsewhere in the front room, try to get a seat near the door. The open kitchen makes things up front hot, hot, hot and I don't mean that in a good way. What is hot, hot, hot in a good way is the photo on the wall of the left-hand restroom. Gentlemen (and ladies, for that matter) who appreciate the topless female form and pyromaniacs should check it out.

3. Eric’s is another of those ill-named restaurants. Who in their right mind hears "Eric's" and thinks "Chinese food?" I'm sure there's a story behind the name but that doesn't make it a good idea. It's also not a good idea to drive halfway across town for forgettable food but that's exactly happened with Eric's. On both counts. I totally forget what I ate. I remember it being OK but nothing to get excited about. A Check Please! reviewer called it the "best Chinese food in San Francisco." I'd call it a good place to go if you're in the neighborhood and aren't fussy about a restaurant's cleanliness (rock bottom food inspection score of 64). If I'm going a distance for Chinese food, I'm going to go for something spectacular, like San Tung. Places with food as good as Eric's are a dime a dozen.

4. The House was a major disappointment. Combining comments from Check Please! with a Zagat food score of 26, our expectations were sky high. The first warning sign was when Mackie declared that she didn't see anything on the menu that sounded good. But we'd heard such good things, we'd gone out of our way to get there and, dammit, we'd paid for parking. I would not be deterred. I ordered enough for two, hoping that when it arrived, something would strike her fancy. Turns out her instincts were correct. The food fell far short of the mark. The shrimp and chive dumplings were OK but no better than I've had at any number of so-so dim sum joints. The tempura green beans couldn't touch the ones at COCO500. (In fairness, this comment is made with hindsight — we went to The House before I ever visited COCO500.) Soy-glazed salmon and marinated beef short ribs were nothing special. Our visit to The House reconfirmed my deeply held suspicion about fusion and pan-anything cuisines. My take is that they are refuges for people who can't properly execute the classics of any food style.

5. I do not understand the fuss about Incanto. It is, perhaps, the most overrated restaurant in the Bay Area (hmm…now there’s an idea for a suitably grumpy post). Offal revulses most people for a reason...it's disgusting!!! While I get Chris Cosentino's point about honoring the whole animal that sacrificed its life by using all of the parts, that doesn't mean that humans have to do the eating. Put all the offal you want in soft cat food — our kitties will love it! As with The House, Mackie wasn't impressed by the menu but found a pasta with pork ragu that sounded good — until she asked our server what cut of pork was used. When the server mentioned that they occasionally used heart in the sauce, I though I was going to have to hogtie Mackie to keep her from running out the door. Seriously, she wanted to leave me with the car and take a cab home. At the time, we lived in Russian Hill. If you know where Incanto is located, you'll realize how long a schlep that would have been! After the server determined that the kitchen wasn't using heart that night, Mackie ordered it. She barely picked at it when it arrived, not fully confident that the ragu was truly heartless. I had some salumi for a starter, which was good. All recollection of my main course has been totally obliterated, meaning that it was not nearly as memorable at Mackie's heart-stopping experience.

6. We heard about Nob Hill Café on Check Please! and saw it noted on some food sites. That information got filed away with no action until, quite by accident, we found ourselves standing outside of the place. Now, Mackie is a big fan of horror anything. If it's got vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, ghosts, whatever supernatural entity you can imagine, she's there. So, when she saw an ad for the Vampire Tour of San Francisco, she decided that it would make a good Saturday night outing for us. Talk about a waste of time and money! We tired of the vampire puns after hearing about a hundred of them and our stomachs started to rumble as the tour stood on the sidewalk outside of the Nob Hill Café. (I can imagine this conversation...Diner: Why are all of those people standing outside and staring in? Server: Oh, don't worry, ma'am, that just the Saturday night vampire tour. Sheesh! The management must be happy about being a stop!) Remembering that we'd heard good things about the place, we checked out of the tour and into dinner. The dinner wasn't much better. The best thing I can say about Nob Hill Café is that we didn't leave hungry.

Old Krakow
385 West Portal Avenue
between 14th Avenue and 15th Avenue
San Francisco, CA  94127
415-564-4848
Web site
Food inspection score: 98
Symbol of Excellence: Yes

The Blue Plate
3218 Mission Street
between Valencia Street and 29th Street
San Francisco, CA  94110
415-282-6777
Web site
Food inspection score: 78
Symbol of Excellence: No

Eric's
1500 Church Street
at 27th Street
San Francisco, CA  94131
415-282-0919
No web site
Food inspection score: 64
Symbol of Excellence: No

The House
1230 Grant Avenue
between Columbus Avenue and Vallejo Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
415-986-8612
Web site
Food inspection score: 98
Symbol of Excellence: Yes

Incanto
1550 Church Street
at Duncan Street
San Francisco, CA  94131
415-641-4500
Web site
Food inspection score: 100
Symbol of Excellence: Yes