Brazen Head, at 30, Is Still a Regal Beagle

Jim L./Yelp

Yep, it still looks like this.

​Part of a series of posts on San Francisco restaurants that have been loved for so long they've slipped into a media black hole.

The Brazen Head, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, brazenly hasn't changed much in those years. The stained glass windows in the entryway, the raftered ceilings and wood-covered walls, the burgundy carpets, the dim orange glow of the tableside sconces, the clusters of mirrors and photographs on the walls, the U-shaped wooden bar with its curtain of upside-down wine glasses ― to anyone who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, the decor feels as familiar as as Scooby-Doo reruns. (Hey, Jack, did Chrissy and Janet just step out for a smoke?) The exterior is covered over by scaffolding ― a paint job, the host told our table when I ate there recently ― but the owners would be fools to rehaul the insides now. The decor is just a few years away from graduating from dated to showpiece.

Even on a weeknight, 30 years after opening, the Head is still busy. The average age of the clientele is 50, and they're living well: the guys in the beards and baseball caps who have boats in the marina, the Cow Hollow bohos who aged into prime real-estate holders, the VPs in their 40s flushed with wine and red meat. The servers occupy the space like men and women who've been at their jobs for a few decades. They don't gush, they don't rush ― they figured out how to attend to eight tables without bustling long ago.

"We're known for our steaks," our server told us at the beginning of the meal. Indeed, the menu lists several ― New York strip, filet mignon, and ribeye ― as well as a list of dishes that I haven't eaten in a decade or two: escargots, roasted heads of garlic with Camembert, prawns scampi, tuna tartare with seaweed salad (a rare nod to the 1990s). The meals all come with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. The wine list is made up of decent supermarket-shelf brands, with a couple of high-roller bottles thrown in. I regretted not starting the meal with a martini.

And the food, well, it was about what I expected. A mixed-green salad with avocado, fennel, and goat cheese was tossed with a few drops too many of a sweet-sharp dressing. A thick brandy cream sauce coated the signature New York pepper steak (8 ounces for $20, 12 ounces for $29); it came out the medium rare I requested, but wasn't a great piece of meat. The burger ($13), too, was respectable, served on a puffy onion roll with a dense tangle of caramelized onions.

I got the sense that its regulars adore the restaurant as much as a place as a source for food. It knows what its customers want: The customers want food they know, and the restaurant draws the kind of crowd that returns, and returns, and returns. The Brazen Head's not the kind of place I'd return to. Props to the owners for pulling off that kind of feat.