I’m always happy to share another place for you to try out for a meal or a snack in the City. Let’s face it. There are only so many hours in the day and there are so many good choices out there to tempt you. So if I can help narrow the field, I’m more than willing to do so.

Check the SF Gate pages for Golden Gate Park here.

This one is about a far west as you can go and still be in San Francisco, at the very western end of Golden Gate Park. It has history and some classic architecture to boot. But the real treat is the food and the beer! The Beach Chalet manages to do more than just combine those elements. It produces a great experience that uses the location as a backdrop for a fine time. I’ve enjoyed every meal here.

A 1996 article by Peter Fish from Sunset Magazine in 1996 tells the history of the structure:

THE RISE, FALL, AND RISE OF A LANDMARK

Completed in 1925, the terra-cotta-tiled chalet was one of the last projects by distinguished San Francisco architect Willis Polk. During the Depression, the city-owned building acquired additional tone when the Works Projects Administration commissioned French-born society artist Lucien Labaudt to adorn the downstairs walls. For two years, Labaudt toiled on frescoes of San Francisco, painting city scenes from the Embarcadero to Seal Rocks, in a style that melded Diego Rivera realism with fashion-illustration elegance.

Its distinguished pedigree notwithstanding, the chalet never became the elite watering hole the city hoped for. During World War II, the army used the building as a coastal defense headquarters. Later the Veterans of Foreign Wars took over, and the chalet declined into a bar usually described as "seedy" in the newspaper accounts of the brawls that took place there.

Two years ago the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department began a $2-million restoration of the chalet, part of a project to revitalize the western end of Golden Gate Park. Coming attractions include new landscaping and trails, new park entrances at Lincoln Way and Kennedy Drive, and possibly even a restoration of the old Murphy Windmill at the park's southwestern corner. (The more northerly Dutch Windmill was spruced up in the 1980s and stands grandly just north of the chalet.)

The chalet's first floor is devoted to a park visitor center, where natural history exhibits have been kept low so as not to block views of Labaudt's handiwork. "The main point of the room is still the murals," says park planner Deborah Learner.

Upstairs, restaurateurs Lara and Greg Truppelli have turned an old VFW meeting room into the Beach Chalet Brewery & Restaurant. The restaurant offers five different microbrews and one of those menus described as "eclectic." Though the restaurant decor lacks the murals of downstairs, it has its compensations. Chief among them is a view out to the Pacific that recalls the rest of the Harte poem painted on the murals below: "Thou seest the white seas strike their tents/O Warder of two continents."

The menu offers some great variety to match the surroundings. And the beer brewed on site matches it wonderfully - including some seasonal favorites such as the Ocean Beach Oktoberfest - which you can buy to take home and enjoy. And they also have some souvenirs to match including some of the great beer label art seen below.

And if things seem a bit busy upstairs, check out the Park Chalet downstairs. Same great beer and it’s own menu, too!

Check out a Park Chalet review by Johnny Jet here.

So, if you’re traveling along the Great Highway in San Francisco, do yourself a favor and take a while to stop in and check it out. You’ll be glad you did.