JB's Place — Restaurant in San Francisco

Open only on weekdays, this is a reassuringly old-fashioned lunch joint. The portion sizes are large and the prices are reasonable. You wouldn't expect the quality of the food at a place like this to win awards, and it doesn't, but I've never had anything here to complain about. You can expect a few hot entrees that change daily, along with a fairly extensive permanent menu. The selection outside the hot entrees consist mainly of sandwiches, burgers, and salads, though you can also quickly grab a prepackaged bagel with cream cheese. Actually, the quality of their salads may surprise you, and they carry both prepackaged salads as well as at least a ceasar salad that you can order at the counter. You can polish your meal with a pick from among several options of pastries and donuts. Their fridge is stuffed with an impressively wide selection of bottled drinks and their salty snack and candy bar selection is also wider than what I'd consider average for a place of this scale. There are 10 or so small tables inside and two or three two-person tables just outside the door, but no one would call this place spacious. The flow that consists of ordering at the counter, picking up your food, and paying at the cashier is not exactly streamlined, so this ordering-and-paying process could get a little clogged and confusing when things are really busy at the height of the lunch rush. When the place is more empty, you won't even notice any problem with...

We are regulars here. I started going after our graveyard shifts for breakfast and quickly fell in love with their sandwiches, crispy french fries, breakfast burritos, and genuine people. My husband has been coming here since he was in grade school a couple of decades ago and this has been a neighborhood gem for forever.

There are some really good people working here. They are super friendly and thoughtful. They always remember me and my husband to all of our kids from pregnancy to their childhood now. The owner even gave one of my boys a toy dinosaur he had on his display since my kid liked it so much.

Sandwiches are made to order, to your liking. Their dutch crunch bread is so good. I like to get their chicken salad or the egg salad. I've also gotten the meatloaf special from time to time on toasted wheat bread and it's delicious. The husband likes their poor boy, hot coppa, roast beef or the Reuben. Sometimes when he's really hungry he'll get a cheeseburger which is also good. The ingredients are freshly prepared every day and orders are always made with care.

Parking is street parking so if the street is busy you have to have some patience but come by y'all. I highly...

This is the kind of place where they learn your name if you come in more than a handful of times. Where they know what you're going to order but ask anyway — not out of habit, but out of respect. Where asking "what's good?" gets you a few well-chosen words, not Kabuki.

JB’s doesn’t perform charm. It doesn’t need to. The food is solid, generous, unpretentious. The service is better than polite — it’s attentive without calculation. They’ll notice if you don’t finish your meal. They won’t say anything, unless they think they should.

It’s a family-run joint in the oldest sense: not nostalgic, not branded, just actual people taking real pride in showing up for others. There’s no script, no pretense. If something’s off, they’ll make it right. If everything’s fine, they’ll just nod — and remember.

San Francisco’s full of places where you can eat well. JB’s is one of the few where you...