Famous SF Restaurants: Ernie’s

If you’re pining for the legendary restaurant Ernie’s, go rent Vertigo and fast forward to the part where Scotty gets his first glimpse of Madeleine. For this scene, Hitchcock recreated the restaurant’s Ambrosia Room right down to the glowing red silk wallpaper. He even hired one of Ernie’s owners, Victor Gotti, to play a maître d. “I was supposed to say good evening to Jimmy Stewart when he came into the restaurant,” said Gotti to the Chronicle years later. “So he walked in and I said, ‘Good evening Mr. Stewart.’ I screwed it all up. They had to shoot it again.”

Check out the famous Ambrosia Room here.