Usually, when I walk into a restaurant and I detect a faint moldy smell that’s about the time when I head for the door.  But Hunter’s Steakhouse is a historic landmark here in San Diego and how could I resist a place voted best prime rib in town by Earl, their manager.  That’s the mildew smell of our ancestors, likely the ones buried in the back yard.. and it reminds you of a time in our rich American history when if the help got frisky with the landsman’s daughter he’d be hacked to bits and bricked up in the walls.

It’s actually a cute little would-be farmhouse that got converted into a restaurant of more or less normal dimensions and plenty of black and white photos of a more sparse Mission Valley when the highway was mostly full of station wagons, so, a long long time ago.  You know, before equal rights and the Prius.

Since the search for a great steak is my unending mission I strode in and declared my intentions: to order the biggest steak they had.  This turned out to be their prime rib, which they could only make as rare as medium.  A mistake in my book, and instant points off, as the only true way to tell a fantastic steak is to have it as rare as possible, just shy of hearing it moo.  They offer a basic boring salad, but they made tossing it a table-side attraction, which was cute.  And, of course, they also had my other favorite meat, baby back ribs, which, I’m happy to report were the best I’d had in months.  I wanted to bathe in the au jus that came with the steaks.  But that’s pretty normal for me, and of course I left all my vegetables.  Again, normal.  And my two little sweet angel-cake daughters made me proud when they repeatedly tried to stab their meat to death with their forks and refused to be bibbed.  Juicy prime rib, sweet and sticky pork, hunks of fresh baked bread and the same dessert tray they’ve been carrying around for weeks.  It’s a slice of Americana.

You can visit their Mission Valley location in good old San Diego, which used to be the farm house until it was remodeled by Mike Brady 40 years ago to look newer but smell the same, or you can visit the Oceanside location, which used to be a stable before it was remodeled into a whorehouse.  I’m just kidding.  It was never a stable. So put on a light jacket in the brisk 70 degree winter weather and head on in for a nice piece of meat. It’s a tasty and nostalgic view into our rich roots as San Diegans, while enjoying my two favorite human past-times: eating the cow and then wearing its skin.