For fifty weeks out of the year, this friend of mine, Lamory Laumeister, enjoys the very special life of the expatriate American in San Miguel del Allende, a colonial art town not far from Mexico City. Befitting the portrait of the expatriate, there are plenty of parties to help pass the long, sunny days. But when good living comes down to good eating, San Miguel has not much to offer. The restaurants, of which there are many, are long on ambience and short on well prepared food. “I think they all use the same old grease,” grieves Laumeister. My friend is a third generation San Franciscan, and he enjoys the offerings of fine restaurants as only a snobbish San Franciscan can.

So it’s to be expected that this friend would go wild on restaurant dining when he makes his yearly trek up the coast to his old stomping grounds in the Bay Area. And it was surprising to find him here in San Diego recently, patronizing a dimly lit eatery, of which there are seventy-five exactly like it in Southern California, right down to the smiling waiter (“Just call me Jimbo, your waiter”), and ordering prime rib.

The reason he had picked this place and resigned himself to the overcooked beef was due to a compromise. His wife, no tyro when it comes to haute cuisine, decided out of the clear blue that she wanted lamb chops. At the same time, Lamory’s two guests were so hungry that they couldn’t have cared less what they ate for dinner, just as long as it’s soon.

So, after much bickering back and forth, the foursome reached a compromise: a beef and spirits joint, a place which takes an hour to drive to and another to be served, and which offers neither Canard a la Bigarade (Lamory’s favorite), nor lamb chops.

In effect, it was a compromise that satisfied no one. Yet similar situations are repeated all the time. People in general would rather settle for a restaurant they know something about than try a new place and risk disappointment.

One reason for the success of most hotel restaurants, for instance, is that they are convenient and are safe bets for patrons on foreign turf. The food may be as bland as oatmeal and the prices may go through the roof, but at least you know what you’re getting. So, these dreary places thrive.

But there is a point of saturation when even the most indifferent eaters want to get out and see what the city has to offer. Then the search for a good eating spot begins. And how does one go about it? Any number of ways. The novice can pick up the local newspaper and turn to the entertainment page, where the better-known restaurants advertise. Or he can ask the desk clerk about a favorite spot. Or maybe there is a friend in the crowd who, knowing the ropes, already has pencilled a list of San Diego’s better restaurants.

If all else fails, you can flag a cabbie and ask him where the best haunts of the city are. This is the last and worst choice. There is a myth about the taxi driver: that by devoting his life to driving around the city he acquires a vast knowledge of the “in” places to go. For the most part, cabbies know nothing of restaurants; they are at best repositories of second-hand information. “If somebody in Mission Valley asks me where the best restaurant in town is, I say Anthony’s,” explained an ex-cabbie. “If another customer down at the wharf asks me, I say Mission Valley. Why? Because it’s a four buck ride each way, that’s why.”

Most San Diegans are like their vacationer counterparts. They eat at the well advertised places, or at those which offer food almost identical to the places close to home.

But fighting the herd instinct is a smaller group of restaurant goers who, fed up with the same thing every night, want to experiment. These are the people who glance through the restaurant section of San Diego Magazine, running a discerning eye over the ads and the list of eating establishments, looking for something out of the ordinary.

It is also this group, plus a growing number of San Diego visitors, that makes up the restaurant guide market. Almost every sizable city has a number of books on local restaurants. These books, usually written by local writers familiar with the restaurant scene, are almost always paperback and cost around two dollars. For this amount, you get a feast of information. There are half a dozen San Diego guidebooks currently on the market, covering hundreds of eating places. Some are designed for the budget-minded, while others are more concerned with what is offered than with the cost. Whatever your tastes, there is a restaurant guidebook tailored to your needs. Following is a selection of books which should prove helpful to the local restaurant goers, old hands and new arrivals alike.

• San Diego Restaurant Menus
• by Charles Kotlan
• Bookmaker, $2.95

As the title announces, this is a guide to 65 San Diego restaurants, with their menus supplying most of the information. The author, a San Diego native, makes no critical evaluations of the food except to say, “These restaurants are all respectable establishments. Some are better than others, just as some are more expensive.” At a glance, the reader can tell: the type of food offered; beer and wines on hand; bar prices; entertainment, if any; clientele catered to; house specialties; and restaurant ambience. With this guide, you know in advance what type of food to expect and how much it will cost. No embarrassing scenes such as looking at the menu after your hostess seats you and discovering that the food is too rich for your wallet. There are restaurants listed for all types of people: businessmen, young marrieds, gourmets. The author has wisely excluded the chain restaurants in favor of the smaller, local establishments. He also offers tidbits of information on: personal checks (some restaurants accept them); credit cards; parking facilities; tipping procedures. Even information on the availability of high chairs for infants. Published two months ago, San Diego Restaurant Menus is the most up-to-date of all the local guides.

• The Little Restaurants of San Diego
• by Lanny Wag-staff
• Camaro Press, $1.95

The blurb on the front cover explains this book as a guide to “unusual eating places serving great food for $1.50 to $4.50. Low-cost dining with a few splurges.” Lanny Wagstaff, also a San Diego native, has composed a slim, 127-page book which manages to review 100 local restaurants. The author has an eye for just the right detail and in a few quick paragraphs is able to convey a vivid sketch of the restaurant and the food it serves.

Wagstaff can be critical, as in his review of the Lourdes restaurant: “It is nice to have a Filipino restaurant within the city limits, though I would not want to say that it serves the best Filipino food.” Basic information on atmosphere, chefs specials, and food variety is accompanied by a drawing of the restaurant and a map. Because the book covers so much ground in so little space, one gets only a rough idea of each restaurant. In many cases the reader longs for more menu information. Another drawback is that The Little Restaurants of San Diego was printed two years ago and could stand another revision; several restaurants listed in the guide are now out of business. Still, it is a useful guide offering a wide range of eating establishments throughout the city.

• Best Restaurants-Los Angeles & Southern California
• Elmer Dills
• 101 Productions, $2.95

Picking out the best restaurants in Southern California is an enormous undertaking, especially when the information must be squeezed into 200 pages. Dills compounds the problem by devoting much of the space to the Los Angeles area. Yet, the author manages to circumvent the obstacles and comes away with a good, comprehensive look at San Diego restaurants. The author varies the amount of space devoted to each restaurant, sometimes spending a page or more on one establishment while dismissing another in a few short paragraphs. The book emphasizes the new trend in restaurant eating, which the author believes is toward “small, ethnic, mama-papa restaurants.” There are splurges in the case of the Fontainebleau Room and Anthony’s Star of the Sea, but most of the 30-odd San Diego restaurants mentioned are in the $5-to-$10 range. If the author, by trying to write a restaurant guide to all of Southern California, has bitten off more than he can chew, at least he deserves applause for a wise and varied selection of our local restaurants.

• Hidden Restaurants of Southern California
• by Anne and David Yeadon
• Camaro Guide, $1.95

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From the wonderful folks who brought you Little Restaurants of San Diego comes Hidden Restaurants of Southern California. Camaro Press, having enjoyed success with individual - city restaurant books (including ones on San Francisco and Los Angeles) and not wishing to run a good thing into the ground (like Little Restaurants of San Jose), has started another restaurant series, this one aimed at the weekend traveler. Less ambitious than Elmer Dills’ sweeping guide, this book focuses on the inexpensive places not found in most tourist books. The authors make a point of staying away from the chain restaurants: “We have sat once too often in plastic palaces eating sad, overcooked steaks to the accompaniment of Lawrence Welk ad nauseum. So we set out to find those little-known, out-of-town restaurants scattered around the Southland, which are, in many instances, the last bastions of worthwhile dining in the state.”

As in Little Restaurants of San Diego, the writing is tight, with a sharp eye for detail, and it gives the reader a clear picture of what the restaurant offers in the way of food, service, and ambience. (Sometimes the detail may be too exact, as if the writers were trying to show that they know more than they actually do. In a criticism of Hajji Baba’s in Chula Vista, the writers intone:

“The houmas tahini appetizer was excellent and came with warm Lebanese bread. Our only complaint was that the green beans served with the entree were so obviously canned.”) Again, squeezing nearly 100 out-of-the-way restaurants into a 200-page book, half of which is devoted to drawings and maps, leaves the reader wanting to know more about each restaurant. But the book is not meant to be read as the last word on the restaurants; rather, it is a reminder to the weekend traveler that there are alternatives to Denny’s and Sambo’s.

• Guide to the Restaurants of Southern California
• by Paul Wallach
• BW Books, $6.95

Paul Wallach, reigning gourmet for Westways Magazine, is in a class by himself when it comes to restaurant guides. His gastronomic opus is thicker (500 pages), more comprehensive (800 restaurants), more expensive (seven bucks) than those of his competitors. Wallach’s guide is indexed with such categories as “Dining Out-Doors,” “Special Values,” “Inexpensive Dining,” and “Ethnic Food,” so that the reader can quickly flip through the hundreds of offerings and find just the restaurant he wants. Wallach also has his own rating system, ranging from a blank space (the place is a bomb), to a D.P. (dining adventure). Several years ago Wallach lashed out in an article at the critic-as-whore syndrome, castigating food reviewers who write glowing reviews in return for special favors. Wallach is fair in his own reviewing, which is not to say he’s impartial. He has favorites and lets the reader know which ones they are.

Oddly enough, Guide to the Restaurants of Southern California nearly ignores San Diego’s eating establishments. Wallach lists only 23 entries for America’s Finest. He devotes most of the space to the Los Angeles area, which is to be expected; but for an author who claims to cover all of Southern California, Wallach is either joy-riding when it comes to our town or he is simply not doing his homework. A great book if you live in or around L.A. Otherwise, a restaurant enthusiast would do better to buy San Diego Restaurant Menus or The Little Restaurants of San Diego.

• San Diego Guide
• by Barry Bemdes
• San Diego Guide, $1.50

On the front cover of San Diego Guide is the smiling author, dressed in white tuxedo, with a raised wine glass in his hand. He sits in one of those overblown rattan chairs, a table full of food before him, while behind him stretches a scenic view of Shelter Island bay and the downtown high-rises. Another restaurant guide? Yes and no. As the name implies, San Diego Guide is a potpourri of information on things to do and see in our city. Aimed primarily at the tourists who flock to San Diego, the guidebook includes enough information, ranging from antique store locations to bicycle paths, to appeal to natives as well.

Berndes reviews 75 restaurants, covering a variety of ethnic foods in different city locations. The places range from the inexpensive to the very ritzy. Unlike the other guides, Bemdes openly solicits ads for his book, including restaurant ads. Does this smack of Paul Wallach’s critic-as-whore syndrome? Not at all, says Berndes, as he tackles this thorny question in the lead-in paragraph to the restaurant section: “To lend authenticity to these restaurant reviews, we went unannounced, paid for our own meals, and we inspected kitchens . . .These endorsements are our own and not those of an advertiser. We simply tell the advertiser that he can say anything he wants in his advertisement . . . But San Diego Guide reserves the right to say anything it wants to.” All that aside, there isn’t one bad notice on any restaurant. This is on purpose, according to the author, who has included only restaurants that serve consistently good food.

San Diego Guide has devoted only 34 pages to restaurants, but Bemdes has made the most of those pages. He reviews primarily the better-known restaurants, though there are some out-of-the-way places, too. There is also a section on Tijuana restaurants, and the author is eager to point out some house specialties for the restaurant goer south of the border. Again, this restaurant guide is limited by space, but is still useful for discovering new places to eat in and around San Diego.