California Restaurants

Today $15 gets you $35 worth of food and drink at Palio d’Asti, a gourmet Italian restaurant located at 640 Sacramento St. in the Financial District.

French food is more than escargot and brie-stuffed brie; it's other delicacies such as rabbit and duck too. Take your mouth on a trip to the City of Lights: for $10, you get a $25 Groupon for traditional French fare at Côté Sud, located at 4238 18th St. (between Diamond and Collingwood in the Castro).

A team of scientists spent the past decade comparing the eco-friendliness of "Things that are named Roots"; three of those years were dedicated to creating this chart illustrating their findings:

Tucked in the heart of the Financial District, Globe Restaurant strikes a gastronomical jackpot by fashioning its New American menu of homemade pizzas, piping-hot, handmade pastas, and fresh seafood from an array of sustainable, farm-fresh products. Diners plumbing the dinner menu can dive mouth first into an arugula salad ($8) before spearing a wild king salmon, which pairs salsa verde with boccacino pasta ($24) for an amalgamation even more memorable than the Continental Congress's alliance with the 1992 Dream Team. A dulcet quartet of pizzas shepherd fresh panoplies of gourmet ingredients—including sopressata, truffle oil, and roasted spring onions—onto their doughy pastures ($16 each).

The menu at Johny's Kitchen straddles the border between Mexican and Mediterranean fare. Yet the chefs stitch together the distinct cuisines with common components, including fresh beef and chicken packed into kebab plates or fajitas and burritos. Chickpeas suit up and take a dip in the deep fryer while transforming into the falafel dish, and are paired with hummus or baba ghanouj and pilaf or fries. In addition to international fare, Johny's Kitchen slings grilled and deli sandwiches, breakfast bites, and napkin airplanes between sunny yellow walls and TVs.