At least, if not the best it ranked
with the best, and the others were in San, Francisco. There, especially
on Sunday night, almost everyone went to vary the monotony of home
cooking. Everyone who was anyone in the town could be seen there off and
on. It was perfectly respectable. A man might take his wife and daughter
to the Poodle Dog.
On the second floor there were private dining rooms, and to dine there,
with one or more of the opposite sex, was risque but not especially
terrible. But the third floor - and the fourth floor - and the fifth!
The elevator man of the Poodle Dog, who had held the job for many years
and who never spoke unless spoken to, wore diamonds and was a heavy
investor in real estate. There were others as famous in their way - the
Zinkand, where, at one time, every one went after the theatre, and
Tate's, which has lately bitten into that trade; the Palace Grill, much
like the grills of Eastern hotels, except for the price; Delmonico's,
which ran the Poodle Dog neck and neck to its own line; and many others,
humbler but great at the price.
Listen! O ye starved amidst plenty, to the tale of the Hotel de France.
This restaurant stood on California street, just east of Old St. Mary's
Church. One could throw a biscuit from its back windows into Chinatown.
It occupied a big ramshackle house, which had been a mansion of the gold
days. Louis, the proprietor, was a Frenchman of the Bas Pyrenees; and
his accent was as thick as his peasant soups. The patrons were Frenchmen
of the poorer class, or young and poor clerks and journalists who had
discovered the delights of his hostelry. The place exhuded a genial
gaiety, of which Louis, throwing out familiar jokes to right and left as
he mixed salads and carried dishes, was the head and front.
First on the bill of fare was the soup mentioned before - thick and
clean and good. Next, one of Louis' three cherubic little sons brought
on a course of fish - sole, rock cod, flounders or smelt - with a good
French sauce. The third course was meat. This came on en bloc; the
waiter dropped in the centre of each table a big roast or boiled joint
together with a mustard pot and two big dishes of vegetables. Each guest
manned the carving knife in turn and helped himself to his satisfaction.
After that, Louis, with an air of ceremony, brought on a big bowl of
excellent salad which he had mixed himself. For beverage, there stood by
each plate a perfectly cylindrical pint glass filled with new, watered
claret. The meal closed with "fruit in season" - all that the guest
cared to eat. I have saved a startling fact to close the paragraph - the
price was fifteen cents!
If one wanted black coffee he paid five cents extra, and Louis brought
on a beer glass full of it. Why he threw in wine and charged extra for
after-dinner coffee was one of Louis' professional secrets.
Adulterated food at that price? Not a bit of it! The olive oil in the
salad was pure, California product - why adulterate when he could get it
so cheaply? The wine, too, was above reproach, for Louis made it
himself. Every autumn, he brought tons and tons of cheap Mission grapes,
set up a wine press in his back yard, and had a little, festival vintage
of his own. The fruit was small, and inferior, but fresh, and Louis
himself, in speaking of his business, said that he wished his guests
would eat nothing but fruit, it came so cheap.
The city never went to bed. There was no closing law, so that the
saloons kept open nights and Sundays at their own sweet will. Most of
the cafes elected to remain open until 2 o'clock in the morning at
least.
This restaurant life, however does not express exactly the careless,
pleasure-loving character of the people. In great part their pleasures
were simple, inexpensive and out of doors. No people were fonder of
expeditions into the country, of picnics - which might be brought off at
almost any season of the year - and of long tours in the great mountains
and forests.
Hospitality was nearly a vice. As in the early mining days, if they
liked the stranger the people took him in. At the first meeting the San
Francisco man had him put up at the club; at the second, he invited him
home to dinner. As long as the stranger stayed he was being invited to
week end parties at ranches, to little dinners in this or that
restaurant and to the houses of his new acquaintances, until his
engagements grew beyond hope of fulfilment. Perhaps there was rather too
much of this kind of thing. At the end of a fortnight a visitor with a
pleasant smile and a good story left the place a wreck. This tendency
ran through all grades of society - except, perhaps, the sporting people
who kept the tracks and the fighting game alive. These also met the
stranger - and also took him in.
Centres of man hospitality were the clubs, especially the famous
Bohemian and the Family. The latter was an offshot of the Bohemian; and
it had been growing fast and vieing with the older organization for the
honor of entertaining pleasing and distinguished visitors.
The Bohemian Club, whose real founder is said to have been the late
Henry George, was formed in the '70s by newspaper writers and men
working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership
of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and
actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and
hospitality was their avocation.
