Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: San Francisco safe restaurants

Depending on how severe your IBS is, this could be a challenge! I visit San Francisco every two months because my boyfriend lives in Silicon Valley. The place I usually eat at when I'm in San Francisco is called Tad's at 120 Powell St. (between O'Farrell and Ellis St) and it is right in Union Square on Powell Avenue just a block or so up the street from where all the tourists line up for the cable car! (By the way, don't be duped into lining up for the cable car! Just walk up the road to the next stop and you can board and pay there without lining up because the cable car operators always leave some extra space to pick up more passengers! I always shake my head at all those poor hapless tourists who don't know this and who spend up to an hour lining up for the cable car at the bottom of Powell Ave!!!)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand... Tad's is a bit of a greasy spoon, but I am usually able to order some plain fish (haddock if it's in season) cooked on the grill with just a drop of oil or water only. (Last trip they had no haddock, but just salmon that could be cooked on the grill.) You can get a plain baked potato with the fish, but you have to tell them not to put anything on the potato. The prices are very cheap. For those who can eat it, they sell steak dinners for about U.S. $11 (very cheap by Canadian standards)! By the way, don't order anything other than the fish on the menu because all their red meat and poultry is seasoned and/or marinated.

Personally I don't usually order fish at Tad's. The real reason I like this restaurant is because the Chinese proprieters are very tolerant of crazy people like me with special diets! They literally turn a blind eye if you go in there order maybe just a baked potato and some bottled water and then pull out your own food to eat! I notoriously bring myself a plain can of tuna packed in water (bought at Wholefoods) and I open and dump the tuna on top of a Tad's potato to make my own "jacket potato"! I've been doing this for years there and the proprieters never say a word and never give me a dirty look!

Tad's decore is ancient and tacky, but the place is clean and there is usually classical music playing. All sorts of characters frequent this place and it is open all day as far as I know.

The other places I would recommend are Japanese restaurants where you could order plain steamed rice and special order some plain grilled chicken or fish and plain steamed veggies. There is a Japanese restaurant up the hill on Powell Ave that someone on this site once recommended to me. I haven't tried it, but if you do a search, you may be able to find the posting. San Francisco also has a "Japantown" where there are many Japanese restaurants.

Of course, fish restaurants where you can get plain fish cooked in a non-fatty way are also an option.

The one thing I find in the U.S. is that many restaurants pre-make things so there is often no way to special order the food without ingredients that might irritate my IBS. Even products sold in supermarkets contain extra unwanted ingredients. For example, white rice may contain all sorts of additives and is packaged and sold as "enriched white rice" (much like enriched white bread)!

I am fortunate in that I have access to cooking facilities when I am visiting the San Francisco "Bay" area. So I usually cook some plain chicken breast and I make sandwiches with it, which I take with me in a cooler when going into the city for the day.

So far, I haven't been able to find a bread that I can tolerate there so I bring my own from Canada, or I bake some using my boyfriend's bread-making machine, or I bring a couple boxes of "matzoh" (made from just white wheat flour and water ... it's just like crackers, but more tasty!) with me from Canada.

Hope you have a good and IBS-safe trip! E-mail me if you need more info on food, places to visit, etc. in the San Francisco area.

Belinda

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