Bohemian San Francisco | Page 2

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.

It has taken us years of patient research to learn how these chefs
prepare their combinations of fish, flesh, fowl, and herbs, in order that
we might put them down, giving recipes of dishes whose memories
linger in the minds of world wanderers, and to which their thoughts
revert with a sigh as they partake of unsatisfactory viands in other
countries and other cosmopolitan cities.
Those to whom only the surface of things is visible are prone to express
wonder at the love and enthusiasm of the San Franciscan for his home
city. The casual visitor cannot understand the enchantment, the mystery,
the witchery that holds one;