Having lived on the East Coast for six years and in the Bay Area for only three, I am still constantly, happily amazed at the quality of service you can find here.
For one thing, on my first visit to our neighborhood Albertsons I was picked up some cream cheese and canned pumpkin to make a Cook's Illustrated Bourbon Spiced Cheesecake. I was used grocery checkouts being silent, surly affairs but not this one. The checkout lady started chatting with me about cheesecakes and how she didn't understand why both the cream cheese and canned pumpkin weren't yet on special and it was just all so very pleasant.
One of our first Bay Area restaurant experiences was likewise transcendent. We sallied forth to Alamo Square Seafood
Grill for the first time and as we left, the owner said, "See you next week!" as though we had been dining there for years. Back in Boston, we lived above a wonderful Cuban-French restaurant where we supped on the matchless pressed Cubanos, mojitos, and conch fritters at least once a week. Did they ever do anything to recognize our devotion? Not a nod, not a "welcome back," nothing. (Of course it didn't stop us going, those Cubanos were thick and crazy.)
On my first visit to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, I was happily browsing through the mushrooms at Far West Fungi's booth (this was before they were installed inside). I went to pay for my paper bag of Lobster Mushrooms, and Ian threw in a particularly hulking Matsutake. "This is my favorite," he told me, "Just throw it in a pot of rice and see how it flavors the rice." I nearly bronzed that mushroom with a plaque reading, "I Love San Francisco." But I didn't. I ate it. It was delicious. Then there was the complimentary twenty-three-dollar glass of vintage port that the guys at the now sadly dufunct Hayes & Vine presented to us, saying, "Welcome to San Francisco." My jaw couldn't have dropped more if it was a snowman's thermometer.