The Gold Club was quiet when my partner and I strolled in on Thursday night, a few ticks after 7 p.m. It was the night of the club’s annual holiday party, but the only other patrons were two middle-aged men, chatting at a table while glancing up at Thursday Night Football, and an old-timer in a blazer polishing off a pint at the bar.
The venerable strip club gleamed in full holiday regalia: Blow-up ornaments dangled from the ceiling, and servers floated around in cherry-red dresses and Santa hats. The entire staff appeared in good spirits.
We weren’t there for the party, although I appreciated the bowl of complimentary spiked eggnog that beckoned from across the room. Instead, what drew us here was a dinner deal that seems mythic in 2024 San Francisco: A slab of prime rib with a side of mashed potatoes, vegetables, and jus for just $15.99.
The Thursday prime rib special has been around for years, but amid inflation and rising cost of living, I can’t quite wrap my head around the price being so low. It’s one thing for, say, a busy Vegas casino to offer prime rib under $20… but the Gold Club is a SoMa strip club, still recovering from the pandemic crash.
My wife and I sidled up to a high-top table by the bar, and about 10 minutes after we ordered, the prime rib arrived: A generous one-inch slab of carved meat, sprinkled with chives and flanked by sauteed green beans, a cloud of mashed potatoes, and a little plastic ramekin of jus.
It looked like the encyclopedia entry for a prime rib special. I cut off a piece of my favorite part, the rib cap, and took a bite. The first taste made me chuckle out loud.
It was good. Really good, actually.
The meat had a well-seared crust, rubbed with dried herbs and plenty of salt. The interior, although maybe a hair over the medium-rare we’d requested, was properly tender. I liked the green beans, cooked to a nice snap in a glaze of garlicky oil. The potatoes were exceptional, light as air and fragrant with butter and cream.
Even the jus, often a watery afterthought of a sauce, showed a real chef’s finesse, enriched with the flavor of roasted beef fat and simmered to a glossy finish.
Credit for the meal goes to Chris Hui, who has been the executive chef at the Gold Club since 2015. Dressed in a simple apron and a baseball cap, Hui looked more like a line cook than a stereotypical head chef. Being hired to lead the kitchen at the club was a “happy accident,” Hui told me.
Hui trained at the California Culinary Academy campus on Polk Street twenty years ago. And while his intention wasn’t to stay at the Gold Club for nearly a decade — “Ten years too many!” he said with a self-effacing grin — Hui remains proud of maintaining high standards there.
“People eat here for the first time and are always surprised,” he said. “But as long as I’m here, we’ll do things right, even the simple stuff, and pay attention to details.”
The menu at the Gold Club is lean and focused, only featuring a handful of appetizers, a burger, a Caesar salad, and a quartet of entrees. The most famous dish is by far Gold Club’s fried chicken, which is very good — the secret recipe was “handed down” to him, Hui said.
The chicken was the star of the club’s beloved “free” lunch buffet (with a $5 cover to get in the door), which died during the pandemic. It’s unclear whether the club will reopen for lunch. Business has generally been tough for strip clubs lately, and the exodus of tech workers from downtown SF and SoMa really hurt the Gold Club — this was the place once lovingly dubbed “Conference Room G” among the tech managerial class, after all.
In that context, maintaining a $15.99 prime rib special seems almost like an act of charity, given the average cost of a similar meal at steak joints like House of Prime Rib ($65), Harris’ ($65) or Original Joe’s ($50). No, the Gold Club doesn’t have HoPR’s famous “spinning salad.” Then again, HoPR doesn’t have beautiful dancers twirling on stainless steel poles.
And maybe the hedonism makes the food taste better, even if a lavish meal at a strip club is less common here in the Bay than in other parts of the country, like Portland or Atlanta. As rapper Rich Homie Quan pointed out in a recent Youtube video, such a visit isn’t about flirting or getting a dance. It's just about ambiance. “It puts me in the mind of, like, the Scarface movie,” he said.
I’m not sure I felt quite like Tony Montana sitting in the midst of it all, even as the club began filling up with revelers. But the meal and vibe sure worked their charms: My partner and I couldn’t help but tip our favorite dancers with a flurry of dollar bills before heading out.
