The night before our first trip to San Francisco I was watching TV with my Dad. As he flipped through the channels the Golden Gate Bridge came into view, so we decided to watch whatever it was. It turned out to be Throwdown with Bobby Flay, highlighting a Paella chef in San Francisco (season 5, episode 4). We had fun learning about Paella, seeing the sights of the town especially of the shows Fisherman’s Warf local. Afterward watching it, we decided to seek out the “Paella Man” and try the delicious food we saw on TV.
So the flight into San Francisco, we let my Mother and sister know our plan. We knew Paella would be a bit expensive, but we’d splurge on it. All we had to do was find the restaurant. So after a day of wandering Fisherman’s Warf, we found the restaurant near The Cannery. It looked exactly like it did on the show! But alas, we found it late at night and it was closed. Still determined to try the amazing Paella we saw, we decided to head back there at lunch. Except….the next day the restaurant was actually just a chowder joint. We knew we were in the right place, but how long ago was the show filmed? Had they moved? After checking all the restaurants in that plaza, we approached the chowder joint and asked them where to find the “Paella Man”.
We were met with blank stares. After some prodding they got a longtime manager to come out to talk to us. “Oh…no, Food Network just filmed here because it’s cool looking. That Paella Guy actually doesn’t even have a restaurant in San Francisco, in fact, I think he mostly just does catering.” We were defeated. Days of dreaming of Paella and no dice. To this day I still haven’t tasted it. On our most recent trip to San Francisco, we walked through the same plaza late at night, and my mom commented “Oh! This is the place of that restaurant that didn’t exist!” Yep, it still stings.
If you are curious, the “Paella Man” is actually Gerard Nebesky of Gerard’s Paella, a catering company in the area. Here is a photo of what I was hoping to eat:
God damn it looks so good!
On the plus side, we did learn that my Dad and I can find a random place we saw on TV with very little research (but…if we had done research we would have known that the chef didn’t even have a physical restaurant!)
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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