Bohemian San Francisco — Foreword, The Good Gray City, The Land of Bohemia/3 recipes

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.

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; they do not know that we steal the hours from the night to lengthen our days because the gray, whispering wraiths of fog hold for us the very breath of life; they do not know that the call of the wind, and of the sea, and of the air, is the inspiration that makes San Francisco the pleasure-ground of the world.

It is this that makes San Francisco the home of Bohemia, and whether it be in the early morning hours as one rises to greet the first gray streaks of dawn, or as the sun drops through the Golden Gate to its ocean bed, so slowly that it seems loth to leave; whether it be in the broad glare of noon-day sun, or under the dazzling blaze of midnight lights, San Francisco ever holds out her arms, wide in welcome, to those who see more in life than the dull routine of working each day in order that they may gain sufficient to enable them to work again on the morrow.

The Land of Bohemia Bohemia!

What vulgarities are perpetrated in thy name!

How abused is the word!

Because of a misconception of an idea it has suffered more than any other in the English language.

It has done duty in describing almost every form of license and licentiousness.

It has been the cloak of debauchery and the excuse for sex degradation.

It has been so misused as to bring the very word into disrepute.

To us Bohemianism means the naturalism of refined people.

That it may be protected from vulgarians Society prescribes conventional rules and regulations, which, like morals, change with environment.

Bohemianism is the protest of naturalism against the too rigid, and, oft-times, absurd restrictions established by Society.

The Bohemian requires no prescribed rules, for his or her innate gentility prevents those things Society guards against.

In Bohemia men and women mingle in good fellowship and camaraderie without finding the sex question a necessary topic of conversation.

They do not find it necessary to push exhilaration to intoxication; to increase their animation to boisterousness.

Their lack of conventionality does not tend to boorishness.

Some of the most enjoyable Bohemian affairs we know of have been full dress gatherings, carefully planned and delightfully carried out; others have been impromptu, neither the hour, the place, nor the dress being taken into consideration.

The unrefined get everywhere, even into the drawing rooms of royalty, consequently we must expect to meet them in Bohemia.

But the true Bohemian has a way of forgetting to meet obnoxious personages and, as a rule, is more choice in the selection of associates than the vaunted "400." With the Bohemian but one thing counts: Fitness.

Money, position, personal appearance and even brains are of no avail if there be the bar sinister--unfit.

In a restaurant, one evening, a number of men and women were seated conspicuously at a table in the center of the room.

Flowing neckties such as are affected by Parisian art students were worn by the men; all were coarse, loud and much in evidence.

They not only attracted attention by their loudness and outre actions, but they called notice by pelting other diners with missiles of bread.

To us they were the last word in vulgarity, but to a young woman who had come to the place because she had heard it was "so Bohemian" they were ideal, and she remarked to her companion: "I do so love to associate with real Bohemians like these.

Can't we get acquainted with them?"

"Sure," was the response.

"All we have to do is to buy them a drink."

In San Francisco there are Bohemians and Near-Bohemians, and if you are like the young woman mentioned you are apt to miss the real and take the imitation for the genuine article.

We mean no derogation of San Francisco's restaurants when we say that San Francisco's highest form of Bohemianism is rarely in evidence in restaurants.

We have enjoyed wonderful Bohemian dinners in restaurants, but the other diners were not aware of it.

Some far more interesting gatherings have been in the rooms of Bohemian friends.

Not always is it the artistic combination of famous chef that brings greatest delight, for we have as frequently had pleasure over a supper of some simple dish in the attic room of a good friend.

This brings us to the crux of Bohemianism.

It depends so little on environment that it means nothing, and so much on companionship that it means all.

To achieve a comprehensive idea of San Francisco's Bohemianism let us divide its history into five eras.

First we have the old Spanish days--the days "before the Gringo came."

Then reigned conviviality held within most discreet bounds of convention, and it would be a misnomer, indeed, to call the pre-pioneer days of San Francisco "Bohemian" in any sense of the word.

Courtesy unfailing, good-fellowship always in tune, and lavish hospitality, marked the days of the Dons--those wonderfully considerate hosts who always placed a pile of gold and silver coins on the table of the guest chamber, in order that none might go away in need.

Their feasts were events of careful consideration and long preparation, and those whose memories carry them back to the early days, recall bounteous loading of tables when festal occasion called for display.

Lips linger lovingly over such names as the Vallejos, the Picos, and those other Spanish families who spread their hospitality with such wondrous prodigality that their open welcome became a by-word in all parts of the West.

But it was not in the grand fiestas that the finest and most palatable dishes were to be found.

In the family of each of these Spanish Grandees were culinary secrets known to none except the "Senora de la Casa," and transmitted by her to her sons and daughters.

We have considered ourselves fortunate in being taken into the confidence of one of the descendants of Senora Benicia Vallejo, and honored with some of her prize recipes, which find place in this book, not as the famous recipe of some Bohemian restaurants but as the tribute to the spirit of the land that made those Bohemian restaurants possible.

Of these there is no more tasty and satisfying dish than Spanish Eggs, prepared as follows: Spanish Eggs Empty a can of tomatoes in a frying pan; thicken with bread and add two or three small green peppers and an onion sliced fine.

Add a little butter and salt to taste.

Let this simmer gently and then carefully break on top the number of eggs desired.

Dip the simmering tomato mixture over the eggs until they are cooked.

Another favorite recipe of Mrs. Vallejo was Spanish Beefsteak prepared as follows: Spanish Beefsteak Cut the steak into pieces the size desired for serving.

Place these pieces on a meat board and sprinkle liberally with flour.

With a wooden corrugated mallet beat the flour into the steak.

Fry the steak in a pan with olive oil.

In another frying pan, at the same time, fry three good-sized onions and three green peppers.

When the steak is cooked sufficiently put it to one side of the pan and let the oil run to the other side.

On the oil pour sufficient water to cover the meat and add the onions and peppers, letting all simmer for a few minutes.

Serve on hot platter.

Spanish mode of cooking rice is savory and most palatable, and Mrs. Vallejo's recipe for this is as follows: Spanish Rice Slice together three good-sized onions and three small green peppers.

Fry them in olive oil.

Take one-half cup of rice and boil it until nearly done, then drain it well and add it to the frying onions and peppers.

Fry all together until thoroughly brown, which will take some time.

Season with salt and serve.

These three recipes are given because they are simple and easily prepared.

Many complex recipes could be given, and some of these will appear in the part of the book devoted to recipes, but when one considers the simplicity of the recipes mentioned, it can readily be seen that it takes little preparation to get something out of the ordinary.