Fascinating San Francisco | Page 5

original Plaza now called Portsmouth Square. It was here Commodore John Montgomery landed from the "Portsmouth" and raised the Stars and Stripes on July 4, 1846, almost the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the Spanish Presidio. The site of his landing, at what is now Clay and Montgomery streets, has been marked by one of the bronze tablets on which the order of the Native Sons of the Golden West has graven many of the historic episodes of California. Not far away, on the south side of Sacramento street, between Davis and Front, there is a brick building marked by a tablet as the site of Fort Gunnybags, headquarters of the Vigilance Committee, which in 1856 hanged Casey and Cora, two enemies of law and order, from its windows. In Portsmouth Square itself, token of a gentler spirit, there stands a drinking fountain in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. That prince of idlers and of prose spent many an hour on the sunny benches of this square. The streets nearby, where stand the few buildings that escaped the fire, echo the footsteps of Stevenson, of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. The Hall of justice faces the square.
The Parrott building, erected in 1853 by Chinese labor with stone brought from China, remains standing at California and Montgomery streets.
Around the Plaza centered the life of the pueblo and of the early city of San Francisco, but now on three sides of it is Chinatown, the fashionable homes having long been gone from this section.
In Golden Gate Park, beside a lake reflecting their outline, stand marble columns that once flanked a doorway on Nob Hill, which rises above the Oriental quarter. This relic has been named "Portal of the Past." It symbolizes the old San Francisco that is gone save for a few traces, for this is, after all, a new city.
It is in the San Francisco of today, with a historic background that survives in spirit instead of in material reminders, that interest is dominant.

Cafes and Bright Lights
"There's a diabolical mystery to your San Francisco!" Enrico Caruso once exclaimed. "Why isn't everyone fat in this city of such excellent cafes?"
The Argonauts who came to California in quest of the Golden Fleece were hearty, eaters, and they laid the foundation for a tradition of abundant table fare that has been handed down since the days of the bonanza kings.
Good things to eat have been provided by successive generations of chefs who have achieved virtuosity. By and large, the moderation of prices has been a matter of bewilderment to visitors. The cheapness of savory food was one of the outstanding traits of San Francisco, in the opinion of the army of newspaper correspondents attracted to the Democratic national convention in 1920. Maurice Baring, the British author and globetrotter, goes into raptures over the cooking he discovered in a Pine street restaurant. Read his Round the World in Any Number of Days and satisfy yourself that a sophisticated observer from London town can become as ecstatic as a Gaul in the presence of soup a l'oignon. There's a diversity to the restaurants of San Francisco that makes it difficult to single out any one type. French and Italian restaurants appear to predominate, but the number of other places, including Spanish, Greek, Mexican, Hungarian and Slavonic--not to mention Chinese--makes the array a long and polyglot one. In the vicinity of Broadway, Kearny and Columbus avenue, streets that penetrate the heart of the Latin Quarter, and along upper Montgomery street, there are sufficient individual cafes to keep any explorer after atmospheric epicurism busy for many days. Neither Soho nor Montmartre is plagiarized in these places. They are foreign in tone, but they belong very much to San Francisco. What affectation and posturing there may be in Greenwich Village are not in evidence here. Joy was at times given boisterous expression in the days before the great drought came upon the land. But the eighteenth amendment and its restrictions have not deprived any of these places of their inherent buoyancy, even though they may not be as noisy as Coffee Dan's.
Table d'hote courses are customary not only in the French restaurants but in most of the Italian as well. Some of these places combine or interchange the menus of French, Italian and Swiss chefs, a piquant entree, or shellfish served bordelaise, being followed by a paste like lasagne, spaghetti or tagliarini, or by those geometric ravioli whose delights are in inverse ratio to their square. If you want fare of the realm the dining rooms and grills of the hotels are at your service, as are the restaurants along Market, Powell and other streets. The cafeteria has come northward and the tea-room and the Southern inn westward by way of New York. The typical San Francisco restaurant,