This week, I went to five strip clubs in five days, which means that I more than quadrupled my strip-club life experience. Before my marathon, I had been to only one and a half (the half was one I ran into drunkenly to use the bathroom, in Portland). But I am always on the hunt for a deal, and once I learned that strip clubs have lunch and dinner specials, it didn’t take much to convince me to spend my week eating a lot of fried food (and presumably gaining weight) while hanging out with mostly naked women who look like they have never, ever gained weight. So I spent the week getting food recommendations from strippers, eating a lot of chicken and carrying around wads of singles.
Gold Club
The idea of going to a strip club was unfamiliar territory, and going to a strip club in the middle of the workday seemed even more bizarre. But someone promised me that the fried chicken was good, and that’s all it really takes to get me somewhere. Plus, the buffet is “free” when you pay the $5 cover. This is literally the best deal in San Francisco, and I am not one to turn down a deal.
I asked my friend Rachel to join me for lunch. She had a lot more strip-club experience than I did. She and I were pumped that the smorgasbord was as robust as advertised. The buffet table even had a garnish! (OK, the garnish was whole radishes, but still.) The spread was filled with picnic-y comfort foods — pasta salad, fruit salad, green salad, taquitos with salsa, beef, zucchini, cupcakes and the famous fried chicken.
Most attendees at a SOMA strip-club lunch buffet (read: straight, male bro-grammers) were more excited about the entertainment factor than the food, but even to a woman who had mixed feelings about the place, the idea of lunch and a show was exciting.
There were no empty seats in the house, so Rachel and I had to sit up front — OK, almost on the stage. It seemed rude to nosh on my chicken while someone was performing (I wouldn’t chow down in the front row of someone’s concert). I tried to hide in the back, but brave Rachel convinced me it was OK to sit there as long as we contributed tips. Eating a giant piece of meat with my hands as I watched a performance was a bit reminiscent of Medieval Times. Rachel told me this was not a good comparison.
At first I was self-conscious eating chicken breasts just feet away from someone’s breasts, but all of a sudden, I was on my fourth piece. Like eating while watching TV, watching a stripper makes you half-paying-attention-eat too, all while you’re staring at her cellulite-free booty.
The Gold Club’s website claims the buffet is “award winning,” though it’s not clear where that award came from. I don’t really care, because the fried chicken deserves many, many awards. The food was shockingly good. Everything except the bowl of out-of-season fruit was a hit. The hostess told me the menu changes every day except for their anchor — the chicken. Other daily offerings include baby back ribs, BBQ beef sliders, lasagna, mac and cheese, and brownies.
Stripped-Down Review:
I’d come back just for the food. Eat the chicken, but preferably not in the front row. A full à la carte lunch and dinner menu is also available on the Gold Club’s website. Also, the strippers were really, really talented.
Centerfolds
“Free” is a magical word — magical enough to get me to Centerfolds at 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday. Each “Sunday Funday,” Centerfolds offers free pizza and soda. (Fully nude strip clubs like Centerfolds cannot serve booze in California.) My friend Jordan was intrigued by the free dinner and, presumably, also by the women, so he came along for the ride.
We arrived early to make sure we’d get the pre-9:00 free entry, so Jordan got us an amuse bouche (Skittles) from the Centerfolds bar. In addition to sodas, there was a alcohol-free beer, white zin and moscato (also sans alcohol), chips, Easy Mac and Top Ramen. (The last two, I was told, were popular with dancers who burn a lot of calories.) The bar looked a bit like a concession stand at a high school football game.
Jordan and I excitedly wondered which North Beach establishment they would order pizza from, or if they made the pizza in-house. Dominoes delivery greeted us a bit after 9:00. We had a choice between pepperoni mushroom and Canadian.
In a ’hood full of good pizza, the BEST pizza in San Francisco, Centerfolds has outsourced to Dominoes. (I commented to Jordan that this model is a bit reminiscent of our whole country’s fucked-up food system. Perhaps I was getting a bit too political over free pizza in a tired-looking strip club.)
The service was great. Our pizza was brought to us by a very nice bartender, and we also had a few girls stop by and ask if we wanted to get naughty with a couple’s dance. I was too embarrassed to tell them I was just there for the pizza.
Stripped-Down Review:
There’s only a snack bar — no real food. Don’t come for the pizza. Anything for consumption in here can probably be found at a 7-Eleven. Centerfolds is closing for renovations, so an in-house kitchen menu might be in the future. Also, your stamp gets you reentry, so you can go get tipsy elsewhere and come back in time for pizza night. Or you can go out for real pizza down the street at Golden Boy and then return for entertainment.
Hustler
I was excited to learn that the Hustler Club has BREAKFAST after midnight. Seriously, you can get eggs here. But because I can barely make it until 11:00 p.m., I went the lunch route. I had met a new friend, Lily, about three days before, and when I mentioned my lunch plan, she informed me she had never been to a strip club and wanted to join me. I’m glad she did, because we were the only two people in the club at 1:00 p.m.
Though Lily and I were the only ones in Hustler, the prerecorded voice continued to encourage “fellas” to buy some private time. Lily and I were more interested in our fried food than a lap dance.
Hustler has two lunch specials — $1 tacos on Tuesday and $1 wings on Wednesdays. I didn’t make Taco Tuesday, but it is intriguing. The wings and mozzarella sticks were recommended by a stripper who had passionate feelings about fried cheese and lamented about bad ones she had just eaten on a cruise. Both recommendations tasted as good as they would at any bar.
The strippers were attentive (we were the only patrons) and asked if we were a couple or needed anything. We were not a couple, but we did need something — a warm fudge sundae. It wasn’t great. But our beers (Hustler has a bar because it’s not a fully nude club) had run out, and we needed something else to do with our hands, since we had promised our cheese-stick-recommending-stripper that we would stay to watch her perform.
Stripped-Down Review:
This is bar food. It’s not the best thing you’ve ever eaten, but it’s not the worst. Skip the hot fudge sundae — the one at the Condor is better.
Penthouse Club
When I called Penthouse, they informed me that they had just debuted a new menu, but when I showed up at Penthouse, the story changed — they told me, “The new menu is coming.” So I didn’t get to try what’s hot and new, but I did stick around for dinner.
My friend Ashley and I were whisked upstairs via a chaperoned elevator to the dining area, which had its own small stage and a Plexiglas floor through which we could see another stage downstairs. The stripper onstage closest to us saw us look at the menu and yelled over her recommendations without ever breaking form or focus from her dance. I was impressed, since when I talk about food, I cannot focus on anything else — never mind dancing.
Our stripper recommended the jalapeño mac and cheese but gave us an insider tip to ask the kitchen to go light on the cheese, and also recommended the steak. Neither Ashley nor I were craving beef, so we went an all-dairy route. We ordered the mac and cheese (advertised with artisan cheeses!) and a grilled-cheese trio with lobster bisque.
Neither of our cheese dishes was great. Ashely described the grilled cheese as one of the worst of her life, and my macaroni was very Velveeta-y. The lobster bisque was OK, before Ashley spilled it all over herself. To be fair, Penthouse calls itself a “Steakhouse Restaurant,” and we skipped the meat.
Stripped-Down Review:
Hold your horses until the new Penthouse menu premieres.
Condor Club
The Condor Club’s website advertises an “everyday lunch special” of $9.95 for a burger and a beer or $10.95 for wings and a beer. I was sold, until I showed up to find that the website was wrong — the lunch special is only for weekends, and the Condor doesn’t even open until 4:00 p.m. on weekdays. (Update your website, Condor!)
I was annoyed by the lies but came back for a late-night dinner/snack. Most strip clubs I’d experienced advertised an artisan cheese plate, and I was intrigued to know how “artisan” the plate really was. My friend Ashley and I continued our dairy marathon with “local cheeses” and “seasonal fruit.” The cheese plate was surprisingly good — gouda, goat cheese, bleu cheese, Humboldt Fog (local!) and more. And unlike the sad fruit at the Gold Club, the seasonal fruit was legit. Ashley turned to me and said, “I know a cheese plate, and this is a good cheese plate. This is a strong bleu.”
Almost everyone in the room with us was a woman — both dancer and patron. Fueled by the “ladies night” feeling, Ashley and I ordered a hot fudge sundae. I was still sad about the one at Hustler and wanted a redo. We had asked a stripper who visited our table about the quality of the sundae. “I can’t eat dairy, or I’ll vomit,” she answered very sweetly. She offered us some couple’s “sexy time,” not perturbed that moments ago she had very un-sexily mentioned throwing up. We declined the lap-dance lesson and went for a sundae instead, which is telling of my life priorities.
Ashley and I cheered on the dancers, who were some of the best I’d seen in all of my week’s meals. We tipped heavily, fueled by appreciation and sugar, and were grateful that we didn’t vomit when WE ate dairy. The sundae was better than the one at Hustler but worse than the ones at Ghirardelli. But you also don’t get to see boobs at Ghirardelli, so that’s the trade-off.
Stripped-Down Review:
Don’t believe the weekday lunch special listed on the website. Get the cheese plate. No food here is going to rock your world, but it’s a basic bar menu, and there are really talented dancers. If you’re going to a strip club, I’d rather have mediocre food with good entertainment than great food with not-so-great dancers.
