UNITED STATES—You think I’ve got it made as a diet guru and paragon of healthy eating. And most of the time I do, and I am able to accompany a piece of meat with a generous portion of vegetables which the cook hasn’t fooled too much with. It keeps me sane and happy.
Somehow on the evening of October 7, I arrived in San Francisco at a joint called the House of Prime Rib, and believe me, they weren’t hiding anything with a name like that. Upon reaching my destination I had intact my confidence that, as usual, I would be able to navigate my way through the menu. I should have known what I was up against when the website for this San Francisco institution boasted the finest English-Style cooking.
Imagine a dentist boasting that he offers the finest mercury-laden amalgam fillings. In the United States, we make a big deal about people speaking English, but I’ve never heard an ultimatum to cook English, since its reputation among world cuisines is pretty much in the culinary pits. But the House, that has been overfeeding people for 62 years, pulls off a crowd pleasing feat of all the beef in Texas plus all the glutinous potato and bread fillers that prevail in British cookery.
Open the massive door and out comes a breaker of sound that washes over the beefeater valet parkers, that is the sound of happy diners, clattering plates and hoisted glasses, three clubby packed dining rooms, and yonder, flames dancing in a hearth. Guys in tall white caps wielding deadly looking knives, huddled over the chrome bathtubs particular to prime rib establishments. My frivolous plans for my wealth include buying an eighteen-wheeler for my own amusement, and I wouldn’t mind pushing one of these chrome boats in my romper room for a few weeks.
Now I was thoroughly ashamed of myself for not rolling better with the gastronomic punches and assimilating reality. I lost hope when I opened the menu—there were no side dishes (usually a lifesaver) whatsoever. There were only five dinner items listed and all heavily involved prime rib and severely compromised by mashed potatoes and even the spinach wasn’t left alone; it was creamed spinach and full of glutens.
One of my dining mates was already way ahead of me on the matter of glutens. “Everything here has glutens, even the salad dressing. Even the beef au jus. That must be gratuitous,” she said. “Why does the beef au jus need any flour?”
At this point I ordinarily would have been slapped to a more jovial state by the presence of this gluten policeman, cleary a caricature of myself and my own fears and prejudices, but instead it sank me deeper into a miserable quandary. All the dinners came equipped with Yorkshire pudding which is not pudding at all; rather a tortilla shaped bread sponge, the consistency of flaky croissant, to sop up the prime rib juice.
Listen, I was in Far Tortuga with the menu and kept staring at it to see if while I looked away something changed on it. Overcome by gluten dread, I took a walking tour of the three crowded, boisterously loud dining chambers to look at the plates. They were hauntingly monotonous, featuring slabs of corn-fed cow flesh and I saw skinny yuppies being handed baked potatoes twice the size of their heads, loaded with chives and bacon bits and sour cream. They waited in tartan vests while ladling out mashed potatoes. I saw something that drew my attention, it looked remotely of vegetable nature while amply slathered in creamy dressing. I enquired what it was and and this turned out to be a salad.
I went back to face the menu again, and selected the least egregious cut. Let me quote from the House’s menu: The Henry VIII cut is an extra-generous, thick cut of 16 ounces of prime beef, for king size appetites. To be fair, the menu also featured “Fresh Fish Daily, ask your waiter about it.” I did. And he gave a rather catatonic: “We have salmon and it’s the same price as the a la carte prime rib.” The waiter didn’t sell it, nor describe its baronial girth and host of exotic ingredients; it might have shifted the weight of things. When in the House of Prime Rib, I say, eat prime rib.
I opted by the a la carte cut of prime rib, but the drawback was that it came without a salad. There was simply no escaping.
