At Great Joints, we are partial to those places that stay open until the wee hours of the night serving the best libations. But what happens when the lights in the bar get turned up and your stomach is growling? In San Francisco, it means head right away to Yuet Lee for Chinese food that will help fill the stomach while not emptying the wallet.

Natives or long time residents of San Francisco tend to avoid Chinatown. That area is for visitors and for the half a million or so that live in the six square blocks. I exaggerate, of course, but the only thing more difficult than getting around Chinatown is finding a place to park.

Good thing Yuet Lee stays open until 3:00 am. Parking is usually available at that time of night. Surprising is the number of people crammed into this non-descript little restaurant featuring Formica and Day-Glo at that time of night.

If you don’t speak Cantonese or Chinese or Mandarin or what ever, you will find that you do a lot of pointing. Point toward the Salt-n-Pepper squid, anything with Clams, their excellent noodles, and the wok hay (which is fun to say when you’ve had a few).

I’ve had the fish ball soup in their before – the language barrier turned won ton into fish ball – and although delicious, I have to say that I was surprised to see how small the fish balls were

Cash only, open from 11:00 am to 3:00 am every day except Tuesday, and beer is available. Communication is limited, but at the time of night you will probably visit, communication can be as foggy as a summer night in San Francisco.

On many a late night, my friends and I could never remember the name of the place but we knew how to get there. We just started calling it “One Hung Lows” or “Seafood Luet’s” because we thought that was funny. Actually “Avoid A Hangover” would be a better name for it. No matter when you visit, Yuet Lee will deliver excellent sea food dishes from the Orient at very affordable, non-San Francisco-like prices.

D.M.

One year after the big quake in 1906 and 11 years before the Curse of the Bambino was bestowed upon Red Sox fans, a small bar and boarding house opened in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco. Today it is an outpost for long suffering New England (and local) sports fans to enjoy a cold bee-ah and a bowl of chowdah.

The Connecticut Yankee is located on the corner of 17th and Connecticut in a flat part of Portero Hill. Long known as a tough part of town bordering on the shipyards and the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood, Portero Hill has gone through quite a transformation. In the 1960’s, the area’s most famous resident was Orenthal James Simpson. Today, it is home to the hip and the yuppie that have found places to live with great views of the city and the bay and an eclectic mix of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and music venues.

The streets of San Francisco’s Portero Hill are for the most part numbered or named after states. Texas, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Indiana to name a few. Thus being on the corner of 17th and Connecticut, the state has been part of the bar’s name during the different ownerships changes. Yet it wasn’t until April Fools Day, 1989 that the bar was named the Connecticut Yankee and transformed into a shrine for New England sports although located a mere 3,125 miles from Fenway Park.

While a great place to watch sports and sample an ample selection of draught and bottled beers, the food is surprisingly good and made with great care. The menu is a riot, and a tribute to both Boston and local sports personalities. Brunch entrees include the Bruce Hurst (Eggs Benedict) and the Dennis Boyd (Eggs Florentine) as a tribute to the “Oil Can.” The Joe’s Special is called the Joe Montana and the Denver Omelet is of course named after Stanford and Bronco great John Elway.

Wade Boggs, Bill Russell, and Rico Petrocelli have sandwiches or entrees named after them. One can feast on the Larry Bird-ger, or gnaw on the multi-decked sandwich called the Bill Buckner Fan Club. And in honor of the famous area native and slashing running back, O.J.’s Buffalo Wings are available with “part of the proceeds going to help O.J. find the real killer.”

A board of daily food specials – always worthy of consideration – is posted in the front room. Lunch and dinner is served daily. When the weather is nice, a small back patio is a great place to eat and hang out. Eating at the bar is fine, and there are times when seats either at a table or at the bar are a premium. But just inside the door are plenty of different newspapers to read to pass the time away.

As one would expect from the area, music is an important part of the place. Edgy, alternative bands play late on many nights.

Pac Bell, er, SBC, er, “who knows what” Park and Candlestick, er, Monster, er, “I give up” Park are both in close proximity, as is the Anchor Steam Brewery and a mix of residential and industrial/dot.com buildings. The 280 Freeway makes the Yankee easily accessible in a city that is transportationally challenged. Sometimes, one can even find a decent parking space.

It is both funny and ironic to find a Boston bar deep into a cultural centrifuge that is San Francisco’s Potrero Hill. And now that the Red Sox and Patriots have found their fortune and the Curse of the Bambino is now over, fans can enjoy the place without any curses or despair. Unless, of course, you root for the 49ers. – D.M.

It is difficult to avoid an obvious pun when discussing a bar named C Bobby’s Owl Tree. So let’s get it out of the way. This place is a hoot.

Right at the edge of Union Square and the Tenderloin – “The Gateway to the Tenderloin” if you will – The Owl Tree is open only Wednesday through Saturday and only from around 5:00 pm to close which is usually at 11:30 pm or too early for a night owl. Bobby, a dapper gentleman in the white shirt and tie behind the bar, is the proprietor and doubles as the drink provider.

The place has a small but spotless red top bar, a few tables, a nice jukebox and, despite the area, friendly clientele. Martinis are favorites. At happy hour, Bobby delivers a basket of salty snacks to enjoy with your beverage. A wet nap is provided to clean your hands after munching. Talk about attention to detail.

As you settle back to enjoy your beverage, some strange karma seems to take possession of the bar on your first visit. It is not that you are on the fringe of one of San Francisco’s scariest neighborhoods. It is not that at any moment one of San Francisco’s unique characters could walk in the door. It is not that you might be spotted at the Owl. It is the presence of owls. Thousands of them.

The bar has a parliament of owl paraphernalia looking down at you. Stuffed owls. Prints of owls. Paintings of owls. Stained glass owls. Salt and peppershakers shaped like owls. Owl table tents. It seems that Bobby inherited his late mother’s collection of owl – I guess – stuff and made it the focal point of the bar. With many tourists in Union Square visiting The Owl Tree, owl likenesses have arrived from all around the world to find a nesting place in Bobby’s bar.

Still, the talk in the bar is almost always about San Francisco: from politics, to the decline in city services, to the price of gasoline, to the rising crime rate in the area. But whether anyone can agree on the topic of the day, C Bobby’s Owl Tree is one bar where “the eyes have it.” – D. M.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Bobby C went to the big nest in the sky. The bar was sold, closed, redone and reopened by new ownership. Though retaining the Owl Tree name, all of the owls that were part of the bar have flown the coop. The bar is a bit sterile without the avian atmosphere, but it is clean and not a bad stop as a Tenderloin bar goes.

The Persian Aub Zam Zam Club in San Francisco is in the most unlikely of places. Located right in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, this bar is as out of place as Mario Savio leading a Republican rally. Among the shops and bars that defined counter-culture and hippie movement stands a place that has a gated entrance shaped like the outside of a Moroccan teahouse. Inside, the bar is as pristine as any that one has ever entered.

It all comes back to Bruno. Bruno Mooshei we would later learn. For 50 years, Bruno ran the Zam Zam Club with an iron fist. The bar opened when Bruno opened the bar. The bar closed when Bruno felt like closing it. If he did not like you at first sight, you were invited to go down the street to the Gold Cane where he would say, “I think you would like it a lot better down there.”

You could eat off of the floors at Bruno’s place…the bathroom floors. A few tables surrounded the rounded-off bar, but if you came in and sat down at a table, that meant you didn’t know the rules and would be advised that the Gold Cane was your type of spot. It is doubtful that Bruno ever served a patron with flowers in their hair.

My first visit was like going into a church of a different denomination. Despite a bar crowded with regulars – which apparently you had to be to get a drink from Bruno – I had never been to a place so quiet. This was the antithesis of a western saloon. It was more like a Middle Eastern mosque.

Bruno was always clad in a white shirt, black vest and tie. Despite the back bar full of bottles and a cooler full of beer, Martinis were the drink of choice. Bruno’s choice.

If you were accepted to have a drink at his bar, if you were a man your money must be on the bar. He would only place a napkin in front of a women. Women were not expected to pay for a drink. He would ask what you wanted with a glare that said it had better be a Martini. He would then skillfully craft a Gin Martini as if he were building a ship in a bottle. Prices were extremely fair – I never paid more that $2.50 for a Martini – and change would be made from a beautiful metal and wood cash register whose drawer was actually built into the back bar.

The jukebox contains classic tunes but you were afraid to play any for fear you would get kicked out. Someone would say something funny, but you didn’t dare laugh thinking Bruno might rap your knuckles.

Despite the intimidation, the place is so appealing. In 1991, legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen said of the Zam Zam “a place that time forgot…its curving bar filled with worshipers sitting in silent contemplation of the silver bullet in its graceful stemmed glass. You expect perhaps Charles Boyer whispering to Hedy Lamarr, ‘Take me to zuh Cazbah.'”

And despite his professional but austere persona, eventually I broke Bruno down. Maybe it was the holiday season. After sitting on the only stool remaining at the bar – my brother went unnoticed and unserved because he had to stand at the other end of the bar – I asked Bruno what he was doing for the holidays. There was this kind of silence a reporter gets when he asks Bobby Knight a question. After nervously taking a sip from my Martini in the perfectly frosted glass, he opened up and told me of his travels to Sacramento then on to his beloved Reno for the holidays.

Our conversation was friendly, animated, and of course, respectful. After my second Martini, I asked Bruno if I could buy him a drink. He gladly accepted with a shot of Brandy. “I’ll be damned,” I thought. “I can only get a Martini and Bruno has a belt of Brandy!”

Looking down at my empty glass, I was saddened because I knew that the conversation had to end. I had reached Bruno’s two Martini maximum and he was not about to buy me one. It would have broken his rules.

I was saddened again to learn that just before the holidays in 2000, Bruno Mooshei left us at age 80. Luckily, the Zam Zam Club is doing well with new ownership dedicated to preserving the memory of Bruno but with a much kinder and gentler approach. They still make a fine Martini, but today you can have what ever you want.

Along with the Zam Zam, the rest of the Height-Ashbury is changing as well. Head shops and record stores have been replaced by the Gap and Ben & Jerry’s. The folksingers on the corner still remain as do many of the people that dress like they think it’s October 31 all year round.

But by and large, the Height still permeates with the spirit of San Francisco in the ‘60’s. And for those that knew him, the spirit of Bruno lives on as well.

D. M.

With so many options for locals and visitors, the top of San Francisco’s Nob Hill is usually an area yielded to the out-of-town crowd who are equipped to spend their wads of money on overpriced cocktails and expensive, dated hotel rooms. There is one exception to that premise – the Big 4 Restaurant – a place so fine that locals will grin and bear a walk through the throng of Alcatraz t-shirts just to savor the experience.

This may be a sign of growing up. As a 20-something just beginning to discover all of the places people only told you about, a big night out on the town with a date was a sweet, super expensive Mai Tai at the Tonga Room – once the swimming pool of the Fairmont – or a cocktail served by the uninspired at the Top of the Mark (Hopkins) with it’s incredible, expansive view of The City.

Over time, however, a bar raining every 15 minutes or snobby service with tables near the busboy station just didn’t seem cool anymore. Imagine then a bar that is quintessential San Francisco: bartenders in tuxedo’s, a piano played with the same care as by Sam at Rick’s Cafe Americain, Martini’s perfectly constructed, a small bowl of nuts at each of the few stools at the bar or at each table, walls filled with memories of the old time San Francisco railroad era, and a perfect melding of marble, leather, brass and glass.

Sounds romantic? In every way. The Big 4 Restaurant sets at the bottom of the Huntington Hotel named for C.P. Huntington, a railroad magnate. The other “big four” railroad tycoons in San Francisco history -Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, and Mark Hopkins – inspired the restaurant’s name.

The bar has no view. But the lighting is marvelous, the din (even when the piano player is on break) is music to the ears and the layout, while small, is ideal except on the rare event that the bar is crowded.

A dress code seems self-enforced. I wouldn’t think of arriving without at least a sport coat, even in today’s casual world. Though seemingly built for the Martini, wines by the glass are excellent and the selection of single malts scotches are ample. And the bartender will not blink if you fancy a Rob Roy or a Sidecar.

I have visited the Big 4 with a small group or alone on many occasions and have always been afforded the same hospitality. In the back is a very underrated restaurant serving continental cuisine, no doubt suffering from high marks because of its hotel location although a hotel location doesn’t hurt Postrio or the Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton.

The best place to park is in the back seat of a taxicab or limo. However, the Powell Street cable car line is just two blocks away and a nearby garage offers parking if your name is Rockefeller or Getty (or Huntington or Crocker…).

The Big 4 is a place that is ideal for the pre-dinner cocktail or the post-dinner wind down. It is not, however, for those that have just gotten off of the ferry from Alcatraz. D.M.

Before California was officially a state – I know this because even though I can’t remember what I had for breakfast I can recall useless facts from my 8th grade history class – Tadich Grill in San Francisco was serving hot meals on cold days. Over 150 years later, no restaurant in America has aged more gracefully.

Tadich Grill, “The Original Cold Day Restaurant,” is a must do in San Francisco. Established in 1849, Tadich personifies San Francisco with a little bit of gold rush, a hint of two earthquakes, a dash of brass, glass and wood and a heaping helping of some of the City’s best seafood.

The menu is a classic. Today’s date is added to a menu that never seems to change. You’ll marvel at the number of seafood selections, although I almost never waver from the Petrale Sole. San Francisco treats like Crab Louie, Sand Dabs, Cioppino (seafood stew), and Hangtown Fry are regular features. The white chowder is a must. A large wedge of the famous Sourdough bread accompanies every meal and is perfect for chowder dunking.

Better for lunch than dinner, Tadich accommodates efficiently any party from one to a dozen. Located in the busy financial district, it is best to arrive right at 11:30 when the curtain goes up and the doors open. A gentleman in a white coat will write your name down on a small white pad and parties are only seated complete. The earlier you arrive, the better chance you have of scoring one of the velvet roped rooms on the side. The restaurant is closed on Sunday.

Dining alone is not a problem. A number of counter seats are available to the right of the bar and the service is as excellent as if you were seated at a table. The bar is small but serviceable and you will get boxed in at peak times making it quite a challenge not to spill a drop of the martini that is filled meticulously all the way to the top of the glass.

No reservations are taken and, as I far as I can tell, no favoritism is given. This was never more evident than on a fall Saturday when I saw Regis and Joy Philbin standing in line to get in just like everyone else. I am sure that at the end of his meal, Regis must have roared his signature “Well, Well, Well.” It’s that good. – D.M.

San Francisco’s North Beach is the City’s center of Italian culture. And no place epitomizes the culture and the City better than Tosca Cafe does.

Located in the middle of busy Columbus Avenue, the charming Tosca is a can’t- miss spot any time of the day. High ceilings, a long bar, coat racks, red booths, and a number of table and chairs create a very comfortable atmosphere catering to singles and groups alike. Bono of U2 was so enamored with the place that he built a Tosca in Dublin. The feel is very European. It is like an outdoor café indoors.

The vintage jukebox is chock full of opera, adding to the romantic atmosphere. Unfortunately, for years a heavy bass beat from the disco next door used to drum out your favorite aria toward the end of the night. The bass has been replaced the much softer footsteps of strippers next door.

Veteran bartenders are skilled at preparing classic libations. The House Coffee – a cappuccino made with brandy – is the bar’s signature drink. The Martini is also a very big player at Tosca.

An art deco neon sign greets patrons. Parking is impossible or outrageously expensive, so it is best to arrive by a taxi or foot. Because of North Beach access, arrival by gondola is not possible but you can certainly use your imagination.

Tosca is a great spot to meet friends or for a nightcap. If you don’t mind a little opera mixed in. – D.M.

San Francisco is famous for cable cars. I love San Francisco. I hate cable cars.

Cable cars are like children. They are noisy, undependable, and they can wake you up early in the morning from a sound sleep. Sometimes both are better off viewed from afar. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love children. I just hate cable cars.

I maintain that only tourists like cable cars. Locals hate them. It is part of why locals and tourists cannot drink together in San Francisco. Except at one bar: The Buena Vista Cafe.

Ironic that the best view of a cable car in San Francisco comes from inside of the most famous bar in San Francisco? I think not. Tourists can sip an Irish Coffee, gaze out of the window and admire. Locals can sip an Irish Coffee, gaze out the window and detest.

The Buena Vista, the “BV” to locals, is more that a bar, it is an institution. America first discovered the Irish Coffee over 50 years ago when Stanton Deloplane, Chronicle columnist, went to the BV upon returning from Shannon, Ireland Airport with recipe in hand and several of the drinks in his belly. Today, no place in America makes more Irish Coffees.

The long bar is lined with Irish Coffee glasses filled with hot water. Upon ordering your number of Irish Coffees, usually by holding up your fingers because the place is as noisy as one of those rolling metal box cars I loath, a workman-like, somewhat robotic bartender puts sugar, coffee, and Irish Whiskey into the glass and tops the drink with crème. Waitress service is available at the tables.

Don’t expect much personality from the bartenders, although I have gotten to know the brothers Larry and Paul and they are great guys. Berkeley grads. They make more money at the BV than being engineers.

One Thanksgiving night several years ago my cousins, brother and I had the unthinkable happen. After setting the unofficial three-hour record for most Irish Coffees consumed, the bartender bought us a round on the house. He was probably fired the next day. Make no mistake; the BV is a money making machine.

Food is available from a small kitchen and food counter on the right of the bar and the breakfast is famous. Being at the foot of Hyde Street, where those loud little bastards turnaround before trudging back up the hill, morning is a great time to be at the BV. The bay view is awesome, Fisherman’s Wharf and Ghirardelli Square are waking up, and the air is damp and crisp.

I once saw on a bathroom wall of a bar this logical equation: God is love. Love is blind. Therefore, God is Ray Charles. That logic loosely applied to “The City” means: San Francisco is a city of love. People love to ride cable cars. Therefore, San Francisco is cable cars.

No. San Francisco is the Buena Vista, not the grinding, bell-ringing little pests that happen to call San Francisco home.

So if you are waken from a sound sleep one morning, walk, run, drive or take a taxi down to the Buena Vista for breakfast and a coffee. You might find the culprit that woke you up sitting right across the street. – D.M.