Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [254]
Happily, reports of Sears’s death were greatly exaggerated; and while new owners took over in 2004, the traditional specialties remain reassuringly unchanged and the vintage dining room décor still sets a cozy tone.
Swan Oyster Depot
1517 Polk St.
415–673–1101
San Francisco, CA
L | $$
Swan’s is an urban seafood shack that is a combination oyster bar and storefront market. Seating is limited to a nineteen-seat counter, where your chances of walking in and finding a seat at mealtime are near zero. It is relatively expensive, uncomfortable, and noisy. And yet somehow its inconvenience is part of its charm (as is the ebullience of the Sancimino family, who have run the lunch counter since 1946). For many devotees, this is simply the best place in San Francisco to eat fresh seafood. Fans have been crowding in for nearly a century to feast on oysters from the East and West Coasts, whole lobsters, salads of shrimp or crab, smoked trout or salmon, and New England–style chowder. The marble counter is strewn with condiments: Tabasco sauce, lemons, oyster crackers.
Dungeness crab is served in season (generally, mid-November through May), available “cracked,” meaning sections of cooked, cooled claw, leg, and body ready to be unloaded of their sweet meat. Crab Louie is a regal dish (invented in San Francisco) in which large chunks of sweet meat are cosseted in a sauce compounded from lemony mayonnaise spiked with relish and olive bits, and enriched by hard-cooked egg.
Side your meal with sourdough bread and wash it down with Anchor Steam beer.
Taylor’s Refresher
933 Main St.
707–963–3486
St. Helena, CA
LD | $$
Cocoa-rich, coffee-strong, and so thick that it is served with a spoon, the espresso bean milkshake alone would secure a place for Taylor’s Refresher in America’s drive-in pantheon. This picnic-table oasis opened in St. Helena in 1949 and has since earned a stellar reputation for one-third-pound hamburgers (topped with bacon, cheddar, barbecue sauce, mushrooms, and mayo, please!), chicken and fish tacos, chili-cheese dogs, and to-die-for garlic French fries. In a Napa Valley spirit of culinary enlightenment, the menu also features a seared-rare ahi tuna burger with ginger wasabi mayo and Asian slaw; a winter salad that includes candied walnuts, sliced pears, and blue cheese; and, naturally, California wine by the glass.
Wheel Inn
50900 Seminole Dr.
951–849–7012
Cabazon, CA
Always open | $
The Wheel Inn is the great American truck stop, featuring round-the-clock hours and full-size, walk-in statues of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Brontosaurus out back. In the minimart adjacent to the restaurant, travelers can buy candies, smokes, and sundries; the knotty-pine walls of the café are arrayed with merchandise for sale: fancy cowboy-style belt buckles, novelty clocks, scenic handmade oil paintings (some on velvet). There is a short counter facing the pie case, and leatherette-upholstered booths are outfitted with Formica on which the wood-grain pattern has been worn away in places by decades of heavy plates and diners’ elbows.
Pie is the specialty of the house. They are truck-stop pies—not elegant or fancy, but satisfying in a big, extra-sweet sort of way. We like the banana cream filling, the sturdy apple pie, and the fresh strawberry.
Much of the food on the Wheel Inn menu is shockingly real. In a diner where the seasoned highway traveler would expect to find a kitchen using fast-food shortcuts, you find instead Karel Kothera, the seasoned chef who bought the Wheel Inn in 1992 and now runs it alongside his wife, Marie, who serves as hostess. The Kotheras are a class act, both in the dining room and the kitchen, and their efforts transform a basic truck stop into a really fine place to eat. The hot turkey sandwich is a