San Francisco Italian Athletic Club is a very fancy upscale social club located right in the center of San Francisco's iconic North Beach district. I was invited as guest to attend a crab feed dinner. They made me an offer I could not refuse. I met my friend Bob in the East Bay to carpool to San Francisco because parking is notoriously bad in North Beach. We did park in a garage paying 30 dollars three blocks away. (ouch). Walking the three blocks we got a very short tour of North Beach. We walked by restaurants, bakeries, (one sweet, one focaccia only) gelato store and bars. This is a fun area. The club had been recently painted and remodeled and it stood proudly on the edge of Washington Park. We had arrived.
We had an hour to kill before dinner. The SFIAC is two stories large. It has the main dinning hall with an attached bar. This dinning hall had acoustic tiles on the wall an a very high chandeliered ceiling. It was well thought out because later in the evening we could actually have a conversation with 400 men all talking at once. A lot of hand gestures included; this is an Italian club. We went upstairs were there was another bar and a nice balcony to see the San Francisco sites. They had a gym with a basketball court for members to use. We also saw a billiards room This was a fancy social club.
Take a gander at this anti pasta plate. The olives had just the right amount of garlic to ward off any and all vampires. The next dish was salad and then followed by pasta. This pasta had a sun dried tomato cream sauce. It was decadent and rich.
The main course of crab was served. A quick note of the servers. They were very efficient and professional. It was quit the logistic effort to serve 400 people and they made it look like a ballet. Back to the crab. Everybody was served a plate of crab like the one pictured. It was cracked and had been marinated in (more) garlic, olive oil and vinegar. The crab meat was so good. It had a sweetness to it that was probably from the freshness and the kiss of vinegar. After devouring this plate, I was very full. I did have room for the traditional spumoni ice cream that was served to finish our dinning experience.
Mangia, Mangia
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