Last Saturday my wife and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. We decided to go to an old-school San Francisco landmark, John’s Grill. We were fortunate enough to get a little more than just dinner. We got the San Francisco version of “Dinner and a Show.”
Established in 1908, John’s Grill is famous for serving Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” novel by Dashiell Hammett. The 1941 movie adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart made the restaurant even more famous.
John’s Grill sits on the edge of the infamous Tenderloin neighborhood. If you’ve never been there, it’s the neighborhood you see in all the videos online and on TV. Although the Tenderloin sits adjacent to Union Square and the Civic Center, it is full of open-air drug markets, drug users, homeless encampments, and violent crime.
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