My birthday meal was Sunday brunch at the Crown Room, which tops the Fairmont, a large, squarish old hotel bristling with international flags. From the ground, you can see the Crown Room’s lobby window, high high up, a half oval over a small ledge looking out over the city like a dark eye. We dressed up before walking down the hill . The Fairmont lobby is dark red, deep, and confusing, and we had to ask directions to the elevator.

The Crown Room’s lobby displays reproductions of various crowns of European Royalty. Its dining room is ringed with windows offering one of the best views in the city. We could not have found a greater contrast to crowded, informal Dottie’s. (The coffee was much better too.) Buffet tables offered seafood salad, roast beef, potatoes, shrimp, pastries, anything you could possibly want for dessert. We made three trips. All the well-dressed families sitting at tables, reading papers, looking out at the Bay, reminded me of morning breakfasts with my family in hotel dining rooms when we took road trips. The same pale, early morning light falling on newspaper print, the same white coffee cups set on saucers.

Our waitress, a lively thin middle-aged woman, told us this was the very last breakfast brunch that would be held in the Crown Room. They are going to close it and rent it out for banquets and private parties.

I was genuinely sorry to learn it was the final brunch. Would not have minded making it a once-a-month thing, and I still sometimes look wistfully up at that window as I walk up Sacramento.