Yes, it is.
It's mostly orthogonal to the trendy food scene, and if you follow the latter hoping to find the former you’ll likely be disappointed, but SF is known for excellent examples of both a wide variety of authentic ethnic cuisines and a wide variety of excellent unique creative/fusion offerings apart from the trendy scene.
the south is known for great bbq. chicago is the meat capitol, with deep dish and greektown. maryland for crab and maine for lobster, nyc has authentic jew-food that rivals what i ate in israel and jordan.
what is the food sf is known for? because if i literally ask anyone i know, the answer will be 'fusion.' or 'pizza' with ranch and lettuce in it.
you're known for california rolls. the big mac of sushi.
known doesn't mean known just to you.
you may have some good restaurants here and there that people can uber to. the rest is fusion of hipster and lsd microdoses.
in a city i want to live in, i walk outside and pick from 5 good places. you take an uber across town to those. people are leaving now that work doesn't require them there. to a cities with better food.
That doesn't really tell me anything about SF, but it does tell me a lot about the people you know.
> you're known for california rolls.
Me? I mean, I live in (approximately) Sacramento, not SF; of course, it's LA that is known for California rolls, anyway.
> known doesn't mean known just to you.
Yeah, I mean “known in media and culture”; not for a particular regional cuisine, but for the cosmopolitan variety of high-quality cuisine available.
> in a city i want to live in, i walk outside and pick from 5 good places.
Sounds like SF to me.
The good places and the popular, large, heavily marketed and online-reviewed places with glaring signage, though, only occasionally overlap.
Can't think of any place I've known so many people (and not just of any one national background) who live well outside the immediate area go to regularly specifically because of the quality of some particular cuisine (often, people of non-US origin going for their own national cuisine) that is there, though.