Old, new traditions at the 7 Mile House

You know a family by the traditions they keep. The Asten Bennetts drink amaretto sours on Christmas Eve. Crazy Mike and his wife buy cremation niches for holiday gifts.

The Fisher-Paulsons cook Zane’s favorite spaghetti the night before school starts, and we end the meal with the theme song from “Phineas

and Ferb”: “There’s a hundred and four days of summer vacation, and school comes along just to end it.”

What we like about tradition is its predictability: My sons Zane and Aidan roll their eyes, but they like taking the holiday picture in the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle costumes. Aidan sighs heavily on St. Patrick’s Day, ’cause after the corned beef and cabbage, Uncle Quentin warms up on the piano and I launch into “Danny Boy,” going flat long before “In sunshine or in shadow,” but secretly he knows all the words, because I once told him I was singing “Aidan Boy.” Zane is down in Texas now, and on Friday’s phone call he said, “You know, Dad, at the time I didn’t know I liked it, but now I really miss your every-fourth-Sunday-chili.”

This year our traditions are interrupted. But family goes on, so it was time to replace the backto-school pasta. The night before St. John’s opened the door to all the cherubs, I texted Brian (Papa): “Tell Aidan we are going out to eat tonight, and he can pick anywhere he wants, as long as it’s in the outer, outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.”

No marriage is perfect. Papa and I disagree on a few issues. Take the question of “Outer.” He insists that the blue bungalow is in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior, whereas I assert that we live in the outer, outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior.

But either four outers or five, there are not many sit-down restaurants in the last working-class neighborhood in San Francisco. There is of course Bravo’s, the best pizza in the city, and certainly the home of the most educated pizza maker on Mission Street (I order my spaghetti with a side of psychotherapy.) There is the Dark Horse, which is the only place in the neighborhood that has ever wished Brian and me a “Happy Pride!”

Then there is one of the oldest eateries in California. Back in the day, when City Hall was still at Portsmouth Square, and traffic was even slower than 101 headed to the bridge, there were places where the stage coach could stop along the way to San Jose. Even then the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior was the boondocks, and seven miles out from the city’s center they built a toll house, with a little restaurant named the 7 Mile House.

Vanessa Garcia runs the place now, and what I love about her is that she embraces its infamous history. “The middle of nowhere,” as she calls it, the place served as a speakeasy during Prohibition. And irony of ironies, in 1947, it was cited by San Mateo County for not serving food. The previous owner of the bar was the last person in San Mateo to ever get a DUI while riding a horse.

In the outhouse behind the restaurant, there used to be illicit gambling, thus lending a whole new meaning to the term “floating crap game.”

Nowadays, there’s live music every night, but the jazz is strictly legit.

But Vanessa herself is all about the food. She makes a cioppino in the style of the old Clam House (which was also on the same route out of the city, going all the way to the 16 Mile House in Millbrae). She even has a menu for the canines who frequent “the most dog friendly restaurant in the Bay Area.”

I usually convince Papa to order his meal with a side of onion rings, so I can steal them, but my favorite dish on the menu is Shirley’s Shrimp Scampi. One of Vanessa’s guests came in and ordered it on a regular basis, and when she passed away, she named the dish after her. “This gives me a new ambition in life,” I said. “I don’t want a tombstone when I go. I want a dish named after me.”

Papa raised his wineglass and said, “Why don’t you order the crab salad? It’s already named after you.”

Anything the Fisher-Paulsons do twice we call tradition. So next year, as Aidan enters the eighth grade, we’ll return, and toast the Best Boys on Earth, and maybe both of them will be with us in the 7 Mile House, in the middle of nowhere, between the fourth and fifth outer Excelsior.

“This new ambition gives me in a life,” I said. “I don’t want a tombstone when I go. I want a dish named after me.”