Dining & Drinking

January, 1979

San Francisco's La Pantera restaurant, at 1234 Grant Avenue, is tucked into a tumble-down corner of North Beach just a wink away from Chinatown. Renato Nicolai cooks the family-style dinners, and they well may be the last good buy in America. His wife, Rena, who runs the just-us-folks dining room, with its posters of bella Italia and faded family photos, more often than not sits at the well-worn mahogany bar and sips a brandy with Calistoga water. Theirs is home cooking of the variety that has a...