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TITLE: BOHEMIAN SAN FRANCISCO
AUTHOR: CLARENCE E. EDWORDS
EBOOK: E06905 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

THE ELEGANT ART OF DINING

Bohemian San Francisco

Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes--
The Elegant Art of Dining

By Clarence E. Edwords

1914

Dedication To Whom Shall I Dedicate This Book?
To Some Good Friend? To Some Pleasant Companion?
To None of These, For From Them Came Not The Inspiration.
To Whom, Then?
To The Best Of All Bohemian Comrades,
My Wife.

Foreword

No apologies are offered for this book. In fact, we rather like it. Many
years have been spent in gathering this information, and naught is
written in malice, nor through favoritism, our expressions of opinion
being unbiased by favor or compensation. We have made our own
investigation and given our own ideas.

That our opinion does not coincide with that of others does not concern
us in the least, for we are pleased only with that which pleases us, and
not that with which others say we ought to be pleased.

If this sound egotistical we are sorry, for it is not meant in that way.
We believe that each and every individual should judge for him or
herself, considering ourselves fortunate that our ideas and tastes are
held in common.

San Franciscans, both residential and transient, are a pleasure-loving
people, and dining out is a distinctive feature of their pleasure. With
hundreds of restaurants to select from, each specializing on some
particular dish, or some peculiar mode of preparation, one often becomes
bewildered and turns to familiar names on the menu card rather than
venture into fields that are new, of strange and rare dishes whose
unpronounceable names of themselves frequently are sufficient to
discourage those unaccustomed to the art and science of cooking
practiced by those whose lives have been spent devising means of
tickling fastidious palates of a city of gourmets.

In order that those who come within our gates, and many others who have
resided here in blindness for years, may know where to go and what to
eat, and that they may carry away with them a knowledge of how to
prepare some of the dishes pleasing to the taste and nourishing to the
body, that have spread San Francisco's fame over the world, we have
decided to set down the result of our experience and study of our
Bohemian population and their ways, and also tell where to find and how
to order the best special dishes.

Over North Beach way we asked the chef of a little restaurant how he
cooked crab. He replied:

"The right way."

One often wonders how certain dishes are cooked and we shall tell you
"the right way."

It is hoped that when you read what is herein written some of our
pleasure may be imparted to you, and with this hope the story of San
Francisco's Bohemianism is presented.

Clarence E. Edwords.
San Francisco, California,
September 22, 1914.

Our Toast

Not to the Future, nor to the Past;
No drink of Joy or Sorrow;
We drink alone to what will last;
Memories on the Morrow.
Let us live as Old Time passes;
To the Present let Bohemia bow.
Let us raise on high our glasses
To Eternity--the ever-living Now.

Contents

Foreword
The Good Gray City
The Land of Bohemia
As it was in the Beginning
When the Gringo Came
Early Italian Impression
Birth of the French Restaurant
At the Cliff House
Some Italian Restaurants
Impress of Mexico
On the Barbary Coast
The City That Was Passes
Sang the Swan Song
Bohemia of the Present
As it is in Germany
In the Heart of Italy
A Breath of the Orient
Artistic Japan
Old and New Palace
At the Hotel St. Francis
Amid the Bright Lights
Around Little Italy
Where Fish Come In
Fish in Their Variety
Lobsters and Lobsters
King of Shell Fish
Lobster In Miniature
Clams and Abalone's
Where Fish Abound
Some Food Variants
About Dining
Something About Cooking
Told in A Whisper
Out of Nothing
Paste Makes Waist
Tips and Tipping
The Mythical Land
Appendix (How to Serve Wines, Recipes)
Index

Bohemian San Francisco

"The best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours
From the night, my dear."

The Good Gray City San Francisco!

San Francisco! Is there a land where the magic of that name has not been
felt? Bohemian San Francisco! Pleasure-loving San Francisco! Care-free
San Francisco! Yet withal the city where liberty never means license and
where Bohemianism is not synonymous with Boorishness.

It was in Paris that a world traveler said to us:

"San Francisco! That wonderful city where you get the best there is to
eat, served in a manner that enhances its flavor and establishes it
forever in your memory."

Were one to write of San Francisco and omit mention of its gustatory
delights the whole world would protest, for in San Francisco eating is
an art and cooking a science, and he who knows not what San Francisco
provides knows neither art nor science.

Here have congregated the world's greatest chefs, and when one exclaims
in ecstasy over a wonderful flavor found in some dingy restaurant, let
him not be surprised if he learn that the chef who concocted the dish
boasts royal decoration for tickling the palate of some epicurean ruler
of foreign land.

And why should San Francisco have achieved this distinction in the minds
of the gourmets?

Do not other cities have equally as good chefs, and do not the people of
other cities have equally as fine gastronomic taste?

They have all this but with them is lacking "atmosphere."

Where do we find such romanticism as in San Francisco? Where do we find
so many strange characters and happenings? All lending almost mystic
charm to the environment surrounding queer little restaurants, where
rare dishes are served, and where one feels that he is in foreign land,
even though he be in the center of a high representative American city.

San Francisco's cosmopolitanism is peculiar to itself. Here are
represented the nations of earth in such distinctive colonies that one
might well imagine himself possessed of the magic carpet told of in
Arabian Nights Tales, as he is transported in the twinkling of an eye
from country to country. It is but a step across a street from America
into Japan, then another step into China. Cross another street and you
are in Mexico, close neighbor to France. Around the corner lies Italy,
and from Italy you pass to Lombardy, and on to Greece. So it goes until
one feels that he has been around the world in an afternoon.

But the stepping across the street and one passes from one land to the
other, finding all the peculiar characteristics of the various countries
as indelibly fixed as if they were thousands of miles away. Speech,
manners, customs, costumes and religions change with startling rapidity,
and as you enter into the life of the nation you find that each has
brought the best of its gastronomy for your delectation.

San Francisco has called to the world for its best, and the response has
been so prompt that no country has failed to send its tribute and give
the best thought of those who cater to the men and women who know.

This aggregation of cuisinaire, gathered where is to be found a most
wonderful variety of food products in highest state of excellence, has
made San Francisco the Mecca for lovers of gustatory delights, and this
is why the name of San Francisco is known wherever men and women sit at
table.


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