Spoiler: it was not a hot night inside at Le Petit Robert either.

If the cover story on today's food section has taught us anything (it has), it's that San Francisco loves its neighborhood restaurants, but with that love comes some fierce neighborhood competition. On that note, we're kicking off a new feature around these parts called Eater Heat Check, wherein Eater and its correspondents will tour a specific neighborhood to take its pulse during peak dining hours to see exactly which restaurants are packed on weeknights, and of course, which restaurants are veritable ghost towns. For our inaugural run, we take a trip to a strip that might have the most starred restaurants in a three block stretch: Polk Street. In addition to a time/crowd stamp, we've even included several other items with which to help determine a temperature, for your benefit: