I went with my family to the House of Prime Rib on Van Ness Ave. in San Francisco in August 1973, picking up a souvenir postcard at the same time.
I remember the place seemed dark. Low-light restaurants weren’t something I knew except maybe from TV. More exotically, servers carved the meat at a cart near our table. There was a dessert cart as well. Every now and then around the dim room, flambé erupted. Quite a place for a 12-year-old with ordinary tastes.

The House of Prime Rib, which is still open, wasn’t the sort of restaurant we usually patronized. The only place we visited remotely like it (that I can think of) was Old San Francisco — which was in San Antonio, and still is. We went there two or three times.

Except for the fact that Old San Francisco served upmarket beef like the House of Prime Rib, there wasn’t much similarity. Old San Francisco wanted to evoke those giddy Barbary Coast days before 1906; the House of Prime Rib had a Old England vibe. It was a midcentury fancy restaurant.

We were on vacation, hence the indulgence. My mother and brothers and I flew to Los Angeles that August, spent a few days there, drove up the coast on California 1 in a rental car, and spent a few days in San Francisco, flying back to San Antonio from there.

I remember it well: Disneyland in the days of A-E tickets, the Huntington Library, a side trip down to see Mission San Juan Capistrano, perhaps because my mother remembered one version or another of the song, the smoggy LA air, the winding coastline, our disappointment in not getting to see the Hearst Castle, Big Sur, climbing the hills of San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, Chinatown, the Cannery, the cable cars, my brother Jay ordering octopus at a Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, a boat trip around the Bay (Alcatraz was still closed at the time). A nothing out-of-the-ordinary tourist week in California. What a good time.