Restaurant Review: Notes from Underground, San Francisco, CA

Notes From Underground
2399 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA
415-775-7638

* Eat-in or take-out
* Cash only
* Very limited metered parking on street
* Convenient to city buses 47 and 49, Golden Gate Transit buses

Notes from Underground can be found along Van Ness down towards Lombard Street (cross street Green). It's not really convenient to any MUNI lines, but the 47 and 49 city buses stop right nearby as do the various Golden Gate buses going into and out of town. I don't know why they named this place what they did. I was relieved to find that the interior was not an atmosphere of existentialist despair, with the baristas not only questioning whether I really wanted my coffee but whether I indeed even wanted to continue to live. It was also markedly free of Russians in shabby overcoats rambling on crazily about how depressing their lives are.

Instead I found a pretty typical coffee shop, only surprising in that the prices were pretty reasonable for the Marina/Van Ness area. The only knock against it, really, is that it's kinda small and can be hard to find a place to sit (seems to be a running theme with the good coffee shops in San Francisco). Anyway, they have free WiFi which is probably a big part of the customer draw, and then there's a couple of those ZDNet internet terminals that cost around 6 bucks an hour. The coffee's pretty good and is at donut shop prices, yet it's not watered down. They also serve real food, in the range of $5 to $7 - sandwiches, wraps, pitas, salads, omelettes and breakfast bagels. A small coffee will only set you back $1, adding 25 cents for each increase in size.