House of Prime Rib, San Francisco
It’s unclear what San Francisco is to me, but it is definitely a grower. The first time I went as an adult I kinda hated it. I think my expectations were too high. I was expecting futuristic robot taxis and hoverboards to line the streets, and drones to fly in the groceries, and was disappointed when I still had to get the train like, well, anywhere else.
But slowly, over time, it – or at least my feelings on it – evolved. It’s actually this perfectly sized city, with good immigrant food, a largely tolerant population and a topography which allows for your morning walk to also be your daily exercise as you puff up its endless hills. It’s also a city you can learn to navigate pretty quickly. Not too sprawling or too dense, you can really get a sense of the place from a mid-afternoon stroll. If you look closely enough, there are also a few Waymo robo taxis around, so it kinda is the future after all.
Food, as always, is the main attraction for me in any city, and San Francisco and its environs in the peninsula do not disappoint. Perhaps due to the high concentration of immigrant populations, there are plenty of delicious and cheap options for the Asian food diaspora that I spend much of my free time thinking about. SF is where I first learnt about Vietnamese garlic noodles, a dish that somehow improbably combines spaghetti, fish sauce, butter, oyster sauce, garlic and parmesan into an umami bomb side carb that has become a staple of my home cooking. But it’s also where I go for massive sandwiches at the ironically named Little Luca and happy hour oysters sitting under the Bay Bridge at Waterbar. With thanks to the ubiquitous and delicious taco trucks, it’s also where I leant that Mexican food is way more interesting than a 1,500kcal burrito at lunchtime from Chipotle.
The beauty of it, I think, is that it kinda takes the best of lots of cultures and makes them accessible in one place. Which isn’t saying it’s all good. But it is at least all there.
Our trips to SF are based primarily around seeing in-laws, which means, for once, I don’t have to worry about where we’ll eat, as these in-laws very much have it covered. I am not sure what I’d have done if I’d have married into a family which didn’t care about food as much as I do, but it probably would have involved fewer delicious holiday meals and a life-changing failure to ever discover garlic noodles. Thank god I chose well.
One thing you can’t get away from in the eat-speak-repeat cycle of an SF trip is that that many calories in a week is pretty full on. I don’t regret following up a Vietnamese breakfast with a whole jam doughnut shortly before lunch, but when you’re approaching your 40s that kinda stuff doesn’t fall off your hips on the short walk back to your car. To counterbalance my gluttony, I pioneered waking up a bit early, rinsing the free Class Pass membership and living my best “Real Housewives of California” life at various boujis gym classes. I span. I boxed. I yogaed. I ran. I HIIT trained. Which was all great, but I probably should have done them all twice before visiting House of Prime Rib.
For those who are unfamiliar, House of Prime Rib is a bit of an institution, and serves its signature salt-roasted beef rib in portions which are barely believable. The meal is a standard per head price, where you simply choose the size of prime rib. The “King Henry” cut, which must have originally been invented for a hungry family of large Polynesians, felt crude in the extreme, but even the standard cut was massive. What made this even more gut-busting was the fact that your plate-size, 5cm high slice of prime rib came with (hold your horses): warm bread and butter, a large, heavily-dressed starter salad, corn bread (yes, more bread), a whole baked potato dressed with a mountain of sour cream, bacon, chives and butter, creamed spinach (or creamed corn) and probably more besides. Oh, and you can get seconds for free.
Like the Patagonia-shirted 25-year-old coders that walk the surrounding streets, I’m aware that there is something immediately repulsive about what I’ve just described, but trust me that after a while it and they grow on you and you start to treat it as normal. The wooden panelled dining room is apparently full every day, and draws a crowd of local and curious visitors in equal measure. Anywhere else in the world, I think this would be a cheesy tourist trap, but here in SF it feels quirky and quite fun.
Fast forward a couple of days and I was sitting in SF airport eating chicken wings and watching the 49ers gallantly, but inevitably lose the Superbowl. It was sad that the narrative of the game didn’t let me leave SF on a giddy high, but it did match my sense of unfinished business and a wistfulness to return. It’s a grower, after all.
