American Zoetrope

I love this place. Every time I come to San Francisco I make sure I have dinner out lunch here. I'm a big fan of The Godfather. It has lots of memorabilia in the decor. It's an offer you can't refuse!

This place was horrible. It's so sad that this bad cafe/restaurant has to occupy the base of the Sentinel Building which is such a historical landmark for the area. American Zoetrope just doesn't care about service, pride in their work or professionalism. The servers seemed to hate life. The feeling when my girlfriend and I walked in was immediately off putting (should have taken this as a sign) but we decided to get an espresso anyway (I would not recommend getting food here). They are located in a nice area and we wanted to sit outside to enjoy the sunshine. The espresso looked/tasted like watered down coffee and had no crema. We asked them to remake it but the second attempt was even worse than the first. The servers obviously had not been trained in how to use the machine or just didn't care to use the machine the proper way when pulling an espresso shot. When the barista was tamping down the ground coffee I watched carefully and I don't think I've ever seen anyone apply such little pressure or put in so little effort when doing such a simple task. Also while inside I overheard one of the servers suddenly speaking to two customers sitting at a table in Spanish and then apologizing because they didn't actually speak the language and he was just being presumptuous. I seriously can't make this up - I would be pretty pissed if someone did this to me simply because I "looked" a certain way. He could have at least first asked where they were from or if they lived in San Francisco. We ended up just leaving our drinks outside on the table and headed to Bask across the street which was a much more pleasant experience. We used to pass American Zoetrope all the time when we would go to this area remarking how cute it was and how we should stop by sometime. Well now we know. I never really write reviews but this was such a bad experience I felt compelled to save people wasted time and money on this one.

Best Penne all Arabiata + nice red Wines (I did the wine-tasting) + nice and friendly staff. It was a really nice evening in an beautiful place...

The Kingston Trio recorded in a studio downstairs.

Terrible service and standoffish management. Not worth the trip. Try anywhere else a block or two up on north beach.

Great food in nice company.

The birth place of San Francisco movies

Building ancien au coeur de San Francisco. Sa couleur et sa forme particulière en fait une curiosité architecturale. De plus il se trouve à proximité d'une tour moderne. Le contraste est intéressant.