The Gold Coast Grill in San Francisco, California: A Restaurant Review

The Gold Coast Grill is a part of San Francisco State's cafeteria proper, but of course it is open to anybody meandering through the neighborhood. SFSU does have some food stops that are worth going out of your way for, however, this is not one of them. Not to say the food is bad - it ranges from decent to pretty good, but the pricing isn't anything special and you'll often face a pretty long wait for your grub.

The Gold Coast Grill grills up a pretty good range of breakfast and lunch items, comparable to the menu of a Denny's or something like that. The quality is about the same as that of a Denny's, with most of the food seeming like it came from CostCo or some other discount bulk supplier, and thus the prices seem a touch on the high side. A burger by itself sets you back $4, a cheeseburger $4.50 and with toppings it's over $5. That's without fries or any sort of sides. Grilled chicken breast sandwiches are priced about the same and are a slightly better value at those prices. You can also get various hot sandwiches like the Reuben, a tuna melt, fish and chips or chicken strips with fries. It's a pretty decent range of junky food for a school cafeteria, but again the generic quality of the food items doesn't quite seem to justify the prices. Chicken strips are also $1.50 each, which is kind of outrageous, that's even more than the Safeway deli charges now for their strips at close to $8 per pound.

The breakfast end of things is a little better, but the gripe here is that they force everything into very particular combos and it's hard to mix and match affordably to get the breakfast you want. For example, say you want two pancakes, two eggs and some bacon. A pretty common breakfast, but there's no combo for that. You have to either get all pancakes or all eggs and meat to get a good combo deal on breakfast. If you try to mix and match, the best you could do would be to get a short stack at about $3, then either eggs with cheese and toast at another $3, or an omelette with toast and potatoes at $4 to $5. I don't think bacon is even on the menu anywhere but they do have ham in some of the omelettes. For a cafeteria, it would be better if they had an actual cafeteria style where items are a fixed price for one and then you just mix up the ones you want. It seems like they're trying to do it more like a McDonalds which is not a good template to follow.

For those seeking the more affordable or healthy, they do have a self-serve salad bar here that is a pretty good value at $3.75 per pound. The salad bar usually includes eggs, meat and sometimes even has shrimp. All of which is at a flat per-pound price.

Coffee here is the best price-to-volume ratio on campus. They only have one size available, but it's 95 cents and compares in size to the $1.25 "medium" cups that Cafe 101 and Cafe Rosso sell. Unfortunately, the quality is not up to snuff. The two times I've tried it it tasted kinda like jet fuel. If you just want something cheap, dark, oily and highly caffeinated it could work however.

Lunch hours are super packed here during the fall and spring school semesters, be prepared for a twenty minute wait (or more.) During the summer it's pretty mellow but they only operate from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the weekdays. The salad bar is a pretty good value if you want a quick and affordable lunch, and you can sometimes get good soup with free bread here for a small meal at under $2, but otherwise you're probably better off planning ahead for afternoon lunches around the campus.

The Gold Coast Grill
1650 Holloway Ave., Cesar Chavez Center Ground Level
San Francisco, CA 94132
# 415-338-1674