A Laugh Threatening Situation
Chapter 12 – The House of Prime R.I.P.
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Shortly after college, I moved to San Francisco to kick off my career as an advertising copywriter.
My first job was at The House of Prime Rib. This is not a clever name for an ad agency. It’s a restaurant and I was a bartender.
Breaking into the ad industry had proven harder than I’d hoped, and I needed to pay rent. So I ended up at The House of Prime Rib, one of San Francisco’s oldest and most well-loved institutions.
Established in 1949, it’s been consistently clogging arteries ever since. But that hasn’t stopped herds of hungry people from showing up.
Ask any local and they’ll tell you it’s a landmark, an icon, a “must-experience” destination dining.
I didn’t know this when I applied. It was just close to my apartment and the valet1Be advised: If you leave roaches in your ashtray or drugs in your glovebox, many valets will remove them for you free of charge. always seemed to be parking fancy cars, so I figured it was expensive, which meant bigger tips.
As soon as you step into the place you get a rich sense of history. Which weirdly skews more Old English than gold rush, despite opening at a time when the call of manifest destiny was in the air and millions of men were heading west in search of shiny nuggets.
What many of them found instead was salty meat and old-school kitsch. Lots of bright brass, polished wood, red leather, and low light. The maitre’d, Gus, is a legend.2Gus Stathis died in 2018. He worked at the House of Prime Rib for 63 years. A short, Greek gentleman in an Armani suit who could palm a twenty smooth as butter off a hot knife. All the wait staff and bartenders are pros too.
But the stars of the show are the Carvers. These are the people wearing white toques on top who mill about the place armed with giant knives while pushing stainless steel carts that look like metal zeppelins sailing toward their victims.
Inside these vessels are slabs of steaming hot prime rib ready to be carved up and plopped on your plate. There aren’t many choices on the menu, but you can choose your preferred cut.
There’s the thin English Cut (the menu notes “some feel that a thinner slice produces the better flavor”); the thicker House of Prime Rib Cut; the thickest King Henry VIII Cut; and the more modest City Cut (“a smaller cut for the lighter appetite”). My favorite was the “secret menu” End Cut which is salty, crusty, and the only piece of meat you can get that isn’t pink and fatty.
When I worked there, the menu was huge – physically huge. Opening it was like unfolding a giant poster. They were so big everyone at the table couldn’t have theirs open simultaneously. And there are only six things on it: Caesar salad, mashed or baked potato, Yorkshire pudding, creamed spinach, and prime rib. That’s it. Seven things, if you count the fish option which is always salmon.
There was a dessert menu too, but hardly anyone ever ordered it. By the time most people cleaned their dinner plates, if they even could, they’d already loosened their belts or undone the top button on their pants. Dessert was a forgone conclusion.
Customers routinely joked about never being able to eat again. And for some, it was in fact, their last meal. More than a few times while I worked there a customer would be casually carted across the dining floor on a gurney by EMTs. Cause? Cardiac arrest. Every time. It happened so frequently, I’m pretty sure they had an ambulance on standby.
Fatty meat and buttery taters aside, the main reason for concern was the creamed spinach. I ate it every shift for about 6 weeks. I figured spinach made Popeye strong, so it was probably my healthiest option. Until one night I saw the cooks throwing what looked like blocks of butter into a giant mixer.
You know what they say about seeing how the sausage is made? It might surprise you to know the key ingredient in creamed spinach isn’t spinach. Or cream. Or butter. It’s lard. There’s hardly any spinach in it. Just enough to tint the lard green.
If you worked five or six nights a week and took full advantage of the free employee meals, you surely upped your risk of high blood pressure and heart disease. So I stopped eating at work after that. But if the food didn’t get you, the stiff cocktails could.
I bartended my way through college, which mostly meant slinging beers, mixing vodka tonics, and pouring tequila shots. Anyone could have done it. The bartenders at the House of Prime Rib, on the other hand, were real pros and I had much to learn.
I paid my dues by cutting limes and lemons, restocking wines, and filling endless ice buckets. In return, the two lifers, Peter and Paul, patiently taught me the craft of cocktails.
I learned to make, among other things, the perfect Margarita, Manhattan, daiquiri, Negroni, Old Fashioned, and Bloody Mary – just ask any of my friends. But most of the time people sat down at the bar to sip one of their famous double martinis.
In theory, a martini is a simple beverage. After all, there are only three ingredients: gin, vermouth, and the garnish. But there are endless theories and much disagreement about how these three elements should be brought together, and how they should be served.
All I can tell you, with absolute certainty is, I know the right way.3All of them.
On slow nights I’d memorize page after page of the Boston’s Guide4The definitive cocktail-making guide for professional bartenders. and invent schemes to get people to tip me more. My most successful tactic was Bill Ball, a game that involved putting a bunch of crumpled-up one-dollar bills in a hurricane glass, inserting one crisp bill to serve as sort of a backboard, and then placing the glass on the back shelf of the bar where everyone could see it.
The idea was to get people to throw money into the glass. If their Bill Ball went in, they could have a drink on me. If they missed, the money was mine. It was a real conversation starter and some nights I’d have people throwing money at me like I was a stripper.
The busiest nights were whenever the San Francisco 49ers football team had a home game. The players would all come in after, win or lose. And their favorite drink? Strawberry daiquiris. Big tough guys with pink foofy drinks.
It was funny, but it wasn’t fun. Once a waiter walks through a restaurant with a strawberry daiquiri on their tray, everyone thinks “Ooh that looks good!” and you’re on blender duty all night long.
Aside from daiquiri nights, it was a good gig. Go in for a few hours, and go home with $200-300 in cash. More if I worked late.
One night I was walking home after a long shift and saw some sketchy-looking dudes up ahead on the sidewalk. My spidey sense told me they were trouble, but there weren’t any other people out, and I was too close to cross the street without it being obvious.
I had to think fast. No way these dudes were taking my tips. So I slowly added an awkward limp to my walk. Then I cranked my arms up into a Tyrannosaurus Rex-type vibe, transforming myself into a truly helpless cerebral palsy victim.
I was hoping they’d think I was too pitiful to rob. That such an easy mark would be a slight to their street cred. I’m not proud of this. It was just the first thing I could think of to do.
As I shuffled past, my neck crooked at an odd angle, I couldn’t believe what I was doing. And they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Daaaaamn. Homey is fucked… up.”
“He doin’ the Scooby shuffle yo.”
They blocked my path, checking me out. Thinking fast again, I twisted my head up at them Stephen Hawking style and said “hello” trying my best to sound brain-damaged.
“Yo, we gonna let you go on by my brutha.”
“Yeah, you need to get on home homie.”
They stepped aside and allowed me to hobble past. As soon as I got to the corner I made like Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects and ran for it.
This wasn’t a near-death experience. At least I don’t think it was. They probably would only have roughed me up and taken my money.
No, the real close call was the creamed spinach.
Life Pro Tips
- If you’re ever in San Francisco, treat yourself to a martini and meal at The House of Prime Rib, just don’t go too often.
- If you ever think you might be about to get mugged and feel your only option is to pretend to be handicapped. Don’t. It’s an insult to handicapped people and yourself. Just give them the money and move on with your life.
- Remember: One martini is heaven. Two martinis is bliss. Three martinis is fucking stupid.
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- 1Be advised: If you leave roaches in your ashtray or drugs in your glovebox, many valets will remove them for you free of charge.
- 2Gus Stathis died in 2018. He worked at the House of Prime Rib for 63 years.
- 3All of them.
- 4The definitive cocktail-making guide for professional bartenders.
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