Eating in San Francisco

by SALVATORE P. LUCIA

SAN FRANCISCANS enjoy eating out. Some say that it is a heritage from the gold seekers who journeyed to California without their families, became accustomed to the good and exotic cookery of the restaurants of San Francisco, and were never again completely satisfied to eat at home.

More San Franciscans entertain their friends at restaurants than is true of hosts in most other cities of the United States. The San Franciscan knows good food, anticipates it, and demands it of the many famous restaurants of the city. Gastronomically he has always been an internationalist — anyone not afraid to be uprooted and to come halfway around the world in search of gold would not be afraid to try a new style of cooking.

The descendants of these undaunted people are also willing to experience a new palatal adventure, for tempting foods and new taste experiences add variety and color to a life made monotonous by the twentieth-century routine.

Emigrants from many lands have added their bit to the culinary mélange which characterizes the city — early Russian explorers, Polish mercenaries, Spanish, Italian, and French pioneers, Chinese and Mexican laborers, displaced Armenians, Scandinavian seamen, and Japanese farmers. They have all contrived to give to the cuisine of San Francisco an international character which has left an indelible impression on the eating habits of the city.

With plenty of fine raw material available, it is no great task for a chef of reasonable talent to produce fine dishes. The amazing feature is that simple people from diverse regions of the world, using their native techniques, have created excellent dishes from less choice materials, and thus have embellished the local art of cookery, so that it constitutes a distinctive contribution to American gastronomy. Such creations as the Spanish enchilada, the Italian pizza, the French ragouts, the Chinese garnitured spareribs, the Armenian mutton dishes, and the East Indian Rijstaffel are inexpensive in basic substances, but a taste thrill for the connoisseur.

There are about three thousand restaurants in San Francisco; two hundred and fifty are establishments where fine food is a specialty, and the remainder aim merely to allay the pangs of hunger. Among the former there are about one hundred whose fame has spread beyond the city. Such keen competition at the top leaves no place for a pretender. Perhaps the plenitude of well-prepared food accounts for the absence of the typical “tearoom.”

The French chefs, imported by the nabobs, have conditioned the more elegant and extravagant cuisine, while for the ordinary fare, the Italian and Chinese cooks have left the greatest imprint on the city.

The French chefs who are currently catering to those who enjoy the pleasures of the table stem from the early-day San Francisco masters of the culinary art, men who taught their apprentices in the old guild manner, thus perpetuating their knowledge from one generation to another. If engaged in conversation, a chef will recite his professional genealogy as proudly as the pupils of a great musician. The best French cooking in San Francisco is to be found in the fine hotels, several restaurants, the private clubs, and in many homes. The Palace Hotel, the “Bonanza Inn” of the nineteenth century, still is outstanding for its cuisine —it caters with the same elegance and spirit — and the seeker of fine food would do well to make the acquaintance of the chef, M. Heyraud, whose hors d’oeuvre recherchés, petite marmite Henri IV, huîtres a la Lucien, coufs d’alose amandines, coquille St. Jacques, pintade véronique, filet de bœuf Grand Veneur, and gnocchis Parisienne are outstanding.

At the St. Francis Hotel, gentle, artistic Joseph Delon, pupil of Lafaille and beloved former chef of the Bohemian Club, endears himself to the clientele with unlimited culinary genius, and produces vol-au-vents, Rex sole bonne femme, canard Rouennaise, and delicate sautés of unsurpassed quality.

Excellent French dishes may also be obtained at many restaurants, such as Jack’s, Camille’s, and the Ritz, where escargots, fine fish and chicken dishes prepared with any of a dozen or more of the classical sauces, crab cooked in nearly every way devised by man, and crêpes suzettes may be had to please the most fastidious of epicurean palates.

The Italian chefs have set the pattern for the order of the menu characteristically encountered in the restaurants of San Francisco. At almost any good Italian restaurant the following foods will come your way: for the antipasto—an assortment of salami, prosciutto, radishes, celery, green onions, peperoncini, pickles, hearts of artichokes, beans vinaigrette, and green and black olives. Then comes the tossed green salad of lettuce, endive, and romaine, with a few assorted cooked vegetables, such as julienne carrots, pickled beets, or green beans, occasionally garnished with anchovies, local shrimp, or crab legs. Next follows the minestrone with a separate dish of grated Parmesan cheese so that you need not skimp on the quantity to float and melt into the soup. Then the pasta, which may be ravioli, spaghetti, tagliarini, mostaccioli, gnocchi, ziti, lasagne, maccheroni verde, or pasta asciutta.

I p to this point there is no choice, but then the entree of your desire is served, which may be fish, sweetbreads, scaloppinc, veal cutlets Milanese, various cuts of beef, or other specialties of the establishment. The traditional dessert is cheese and crackers, or a dish of nuts and apples; however, the modern Italian restaurateur has bowed to the American custom of ice cream, and many serve fried cream or banana fritters flambéed with cognac or rum.

In search of la cucina italiana in San Francisco one makes no mistake at Amelio’s, Fior d’Italia, Julius’ Castle, the Manger,

Panelli’s, St. Julien’s, or Vanossi’s. And for pizza, the inimitable Lupo’s is a spot transplanted out of the heart of Naples.

There are many fine Chinese restaurants in San Francisco, and they may be divided into those which serve dishes expressly for the Americans, including chop suey and chow mein, created to meet the Occidental concept of Chinese food, and those restaurants which are strictly Chinese. Some of the latter offer the ordinary meal dishes which constitute the basic cuisine, the chief ingredients being vegetables, the more economical filler substances, and beef and pork. Others offer the banquet dishes, in which ihe more extravagant ingredients are used, including among the meats chicken, squab, duck, shrimp, oysters, lobster, and crab; and among the vegetables, water chestnut, a variety of mushrooms, and Holland peas; also melons of various types. These may be cooked with nuts and pineapple, and served with soy or sweet and sour sauces.

The pattern of the Chinese dinner is not unlike that of the Rijstaffel. Many food combinations of exquisite quality and character, served in Oriental porcelain compotes, surround the bowl of boiled or fried rice, and it is fun to learn to handle this largesse with chopsticks. The dishes are all served simultaneously, and with them plenty of very hot Chinese green tea to be drunk from small tea bowls. A typical menu for the Occidental would be soy-bean cake, shark fin, or won ton soup, fried rice, chicken with almonds and mushrooms, spareribs with pineapple and sweet and sour sauce, deep-fried prawns, boneless squab with chard, mandarin or Peking duck, lobster or crab with mushrooms, paper-wrapped deep-fried chicken, and for dessert, almond or rice cakes, and of course plenty of tea.

A feature of the Chinese restaurant, and one known only to a few fortunate natives outside of the Chinese colony, is that the reputation of the cook is all-important, and that of the restaurant means nothing. If the cook leaves, the Chinese gourmet follows him to his next place of employment. In the present equilibrium, one may obtain excellent Chinese food at Tao Yuan, Sun Hung Heung, the Far Fast, Canton Low, Kuo Wah, and Tao Tao.

Other restaurants of fine quality but of less impact on the character of the cuisine of San Francisco include, among the Spanish and Mexican type, the Tortola, where the sauces are superb; the very fine House That Jack Built, where the cuisine merits highest marks; the Papagayo Room in the Fairmont Hotel, which is one of the smartest eating places of its kind in San Francisco; the Xochimilco, which specializes in meats baked in adobe; and the Basque restaurants, Jai Alai and Espnñol, where the peasant dish of chick-peas and oxtail offers a pleasant relief to any jaded palate. Just over the city line is to be found the famous Spanish kitchen of Estrada.

For those who are in search of the fare of the Near East, Chef Mardikian creates at Omar Khayyam’s Turkish and Armenian delicacies of exquisite quality.

Lastly, for those who desire sea food, there is the famous Fisherman’s Wharf, where every possible edible aquatic form may be had, and where the simple cooking brings out the innate goodness of the fish itself. For the more sophisticated fancier of fish dishes, the Tadich Grill, founded in 1849, is a landmark and a place where the finest sea food in San Francisco may be obtained. The outstanding dishes at Tadich’s are Rex sole, abalone, crab meat à la Monza, and any number of chowders. Sam’s Grill offers excellent turtle soup, baked clams Elizabeth, crab meat omelet, and here the Rex sole and filet of petrale are prepared with divine nicety.

The restaurants of San Francisco offer an interesting presentation of food and a kaleidoscope of palatal experiences for the gourmet. The local cuisine is as distinctive as is the spirit of the pioneers, which still permeates the people.