Cliff Notes 

"You're actually going to eat at the Cliff House?" asked our cool corner grocer, Bill, when I stopped in for milk in semi-dress-up garb. "I take business contacts there for drinks," he said. "But isn't the food kind of -- stodgy?"

I'd thought so too, but I'd lately caught wind of a menu update, preceding an upcoming architectural fix-up. After spending the second half of the century dozing in the Eisenhower Era, the kitchen management had apparently awakened to find the Pacific Rim on the horizon. I still wasn't that keen to go, until an old friend -- an amateur historian -- blew through town. As I listed our restaurant choices, Marti waxed gaga at mention of the Cliff House. "That beautiful, historic setting! It's one of the oldest restaurants in the city -- along with Jack's and Tadich, it's been around since the first years after the city changed its name from Yerba Buena to San Francisco. And a wonderful, racy past -- the Stanfords and Hearsts and Crockers going there to misbehave," she said. "It's fine if they've updated the menu, but even the old food was nice in its own old way."

Arriving on a foggy evening, we took a hard look at the beautiful, historic Cliff House and found it -- besmirched. A barnacle-layer of excrescences tacked on during the '30s and '40s includes a Barstow-motel-style extension housing a funky cafe and souvenir shop. We passed by the bar, laden with young Richmond Russians, to find the main entry lit like a Fisherman's Wharf tchotchke emporium. Behind the building, the oceanside terrace holds a tiny Visitors' Center and the delightful Musee Mecanique, where Playland's "Laughing Sal" is enshrined amongst spooky old penny-arcade fan dancers and fortunetellers. Nearby is the Camera Obscura, a room-size re-creation of Leonardo's photographic prototype.

There are two big dining rooms with different menus. Both are handsome, quiet, and comfortable, with lots of space between tables. On a subsequent visit, a downstairs waitress described the difference: "Upstairs is dressy. Here, we just ask that you be dressed." The downstairs room is slightly more expensive, has more desserts, better views, and a wider range of patrons, recently including the Princess of Tonga and Snoop Doggy Dog. But for our first dinner we chose the more formal upstairs room, with its gorgeous paisley ceiling -- the daytime lair of blue-haired ladies lunching on the substantial salads, sandwiches, and omelets that Cliff House has been serving for 20 years.

Seated at a window table with a view of speeders on the Great Highway, we enjoyed extra-sour bread with cold but classy salted butter. Our bowl of thick, soothing clam chowder ($3.45/$4.95) tasted free of cornstarch thickener (although potato starch is possible) and was brightened by fresh herbs, including sweet tarragon up front and thyme on backup. "You said the Cliff House has a racy history?" I asked Marti, between mouthfuls.

"It's been racy in at least two senses of the word," she said. "When it was built in 1863, it was a sandy six-mile drive along the Point Lobos Toll Road (now Geary) from the western edge of the city. Ocean Beach was nearly inaccessible if you didn't own your own horse and buggy, and Golden Gate Park didn't exist. The first Cliff House wasn't much architecturally, but the rich flocked there and raced their carriage horses along the beach. It's rumored that in bad weather they brought their mistresses instead of their wives."

"Then Adolph Sutro bought it in 1879, along with a thousand acres of prime oceanfront," she continued. "Sutro was a self-made millionaire and high-minded philanthropist, who was later elected mayor. He financed a steam railway connecting to the downtown cable car system, making Cliff House accessible to everybody. But of course no good deed goes unpunished. A schooner full of dynamite crashed on the rocks in 1887 and destroyed part of the structure, and the rest went up in flames seven years later on Christmas Day. So Sutro rebuilt it, and as soon as it was done -- whoops! burned again."

"How come it kept burning -- couldn't they douse it with ocean water?" TJ asked.

"There was no fire department this far from town," Marti answered. "Just waiters with soup pots."

We tried a Boston lettuce salad ($6.45) with a dollop of tame goat cheese, adorned with apple slices, pecans, shredded carrots, and a cloyingly sweet orange vinaigrette. "This strikes me as a Californicated update of the fin de siecle 'Waldorf salad' that hardly anybody makes anymore," I said. "Wasn't there a fancy fin de siecle version of Cliff House?"

"When Sutro rebuilt it again, in 1896, he went all out, with a gorgeous eight-story French chateau-style building -- the one you see in old photos," Marti said. "Just to the north, he built the fabulous Sutro Baths. Three acres under a glass dome, swimming pools with fresh water, salt water, heated water. Hot and cold running dressing rooms, restaurants, promenades. To expose the masses to culture, Sutro included art galleries, natural history exhibits, and a theater. But two years later, he died, and the Cliff House itself deteriorated fast and became pretty raunchy. Instead of just bringing your mistress for a discreet tryst in the fog, you could probably rent one on the spot."

Our appetizer of garlic and rosemary gnocchi ($5.95) had a light herbed cream sauce and summer squash slices alongside, but the dumplings were doughy. "So if virtue is punished, then the Cliff House should have come nicely through the '06 quake," I said.

"It did, but guess what -- it burned down a few months later," Marti answered. "Sutro's daughter Emma then rebuilt it, but with-out all the architectural foofaraw. This is that building -- simple, neoclassical. It never burned, but was closed by Prohibition in 1924."

Being anti-Prohibitionists, we were pleased to find many sound, affordable wines; those available by the glass included a voluptuous Cuvaison sauvignon blanc that harmonizes with rich seafood. Our entree of sea scallops and bay shrimp in puff pastry ($16.95) was capped with a nice buttery puff paste shell, over perfect scallops and blah shrimplets in a sybaritic (if garlic-challenged) "roasted garlic cream sauce." Under it all, though, loomed a bottom feeder, a big flat biscuit tough as sea rations. Assorted sauteed vegetables came alongside. It tasted like pure nostalgia -- visualize a "nice" New England restaurant circa 1956, pink-uniformed waitresses wearing hairnets. Grand in any era was the roast rack of lamb ($16.95), crisp-crusted but rare as we requested, with a simple red wine sauce, bottled mint jelly, and a vegetable "napoleon" of eggplant, zucchini, and tomato layers. The most newfangled dish was an evil special of grilled salmon ($16.95) overwhelmed by raw-tasting curry powder, harsh with turmeric and fenugreek. Even Marti protested, "Whatever that salmon did, its punishment did not fit the crime." It sat on soggy Chinese vermicelli and came with the same vegetables as the scallops.

"So what happened after Prohibition?" TJ asked.
"The Cliff House straggled through the Depression, and in 1937 Sutro's descendants finally sold it to the Whitney brothers, who'd built the Playland amusement park next to it," Marti continued. "Sutro Baths closed in 1954, and 12 years later burned down while they were being demolished for a high-rise complex. But the developer ran out of money and never built the complex, so you can still scramble down and see the ruins." The restaurant and its accouterments are now owned by the Hountalas family, she said.

We finished with middling espressos and kiddie versions of nonce desserts: chocolate decadence cake, ginger creme brulee, and tiramisu (about $6 each), all way too sweet for our tastes. But Marti was still aglow. "The food was just fine -- I loved the clam chowder, loved the lamb. I would send almost anybody here -- it's such a great place."

I'd heard rumors the place was about to change even more than the food; so between dinners I phoned the manager, Australian-born Alan Goldstein, to learn the plans for the site.

"The National Park Service bought the property in 1977 and the GGNRA have been working for many years on a large project that will involve the whole area out here," he said. Among other things the Cliff House will be upgraded and renovated. "The main focus," he continued, "is to return the Cliff House exterior to a nicer appearance, that of the 1909 struc-ture that forms part of the current building, and to make the interior handicapped-accessible." He noted that they intend to repair the crumbling terraces and demolish the tacky tack-ons.

The Mechanical Museum will relocate up the hill, and a new Visitors' Center will be tucked into the side of the hill overlooking the ruins of the baths. The ruins will be made accessible, and there'll also be an elevated walkway across the front, at the water's edge. Tour buses will park atop the hill instead of herding in front of the restaurant. "One of the most exciting parts of the plan," Goldstein added, "is to have a laser light show when the fog comes in. They'll project an image of the Sutro Baths building onto the fog, using the fog as a screen!"

The Cliff House concession is coming up for public bid early in '98; the winning concessionaire must finance the renovation. The current concessionaires have first right of refusal: The Hountalas family originally had a shop (destroyed by the '66 fire) near the Sutro Baths. When they leased part of the upstairs 24 years ago, the Cliff House was fragmented into many different shops and stands. They gradually expanded into the rest of the building, unifying and renovating as they went. They've already lined up financing for the future remodeling.

Goldstein also discussed the current menus: "We've walked a tightrope of needing to keep traditional items that people expect to get here, like omelets, but in the last three years the executive chef has started to introduce more contemporary items like five-spice salmon and bouillabaisse. So the menu now appeals to old-time San Franciscans coming for their shrimp Louis, but also to people who want something a little more modern."

Our window table in the downstairs dining room gave us a view of surging surf. We began with "the famous Cliff House Shrimp Louis" ($15.95); crab Louis is $5 more. We found the Louis lousy. It had a modicum of naked, limp bay shrimp, a great heap of unshredded lettuce leaves, a load of fruit garnishes, but just one aging avocado wedge. The dressing, a too-small portion in a ramekin on the side, was too sweet. But another starter, fried calamari ($7.95), was very tender inside the thick, cayenne-heavy American-style batter. Alongside were bowls of ordinary tartar sauce and cocktail sauce. We yearned for aioli.

This time our salmon met its happy reward as a house specialty: Broiled five-spice salmon ($17.50) arrived rare in the center, its aromatic spice-coating magically conferring a haunting deep-sea flavor. The honey-balsamic vinaigrette on the bed of greens was of course too sweet, but I loved the shish kebab-ish hunks of broiled eggplant, zucchini, and bell peppers. Petrale sole with a macadamia nut crust ($15.95) would have been tasty, too, with its fresh, clean "tropical salsa," were it not for the slight rancidity of the coating's ground nuts. More broiled vegetables came alongside, and all rested on a bed of rice with a tantalizing aroma -- apparently a recurrence of the Chinese spice-blend. Goldstein had praised the downstairs pastry chef, so we looked at the dessert list. It was quite different from upstairs, with more pastries and even a celebratory baked Alaska. Alas, we could eat no more.

Still, we looked around us with some pleasure, knowing that more than the food is changing here. The Cliff House has been perpetually doomed to play the phoenix, rising again and again from its own ashes. It's about to rise again. The GGNRA has realized that its most popular man-made attraction has spent the last half-century decked out in clam-diggers, Cuban heels, and a beehive hairdo. The towering, elegant grande dame of the 1890s is gone forever, but the Cliff House renovation of our own fin de siecle may at least restore the old gal's dignity.