The Elegant Art of Dining: Bohemian San Francisco, Its ... - iMedia

But do not think you have exhausted the wonders of Little Italy when you have
left the stores, for there is still more to see. If you were ever in Palermo and went
into the little side streets, you saw the strings of macaroni, spaghetti and other
pastes drying in the sun while children and dogs played through and around it,
giving you such a distaste for it that you have not eaten any Italian paste since.
But in San Francisco they do things differently. There are a number of paste
factories, all good and all clean. Take that of P. Fiorini, for instance, at a point
a short distance above Costa Brothers. You cannot miss it for it has a picture
of Fiorini himself as a sign, and on it he tells you that if you eat his paste you
will get to be as fat as he is. Go inside and you will find that Fiorini can talk
just enough English to make himself understood, while his good wife, his sole
assistant, can neither speak nor understand any but her native Italian. But that
does not bother her in the least, for she can make signs, and you can understand
them even better than you understand the English of her husband.
Here you will see the making of raviolis by the hundred at a time. Tagliarini,
tortilini, macaroni, spaghetti, capellini, percatelli, tagliatelli, and all the seventy
and two other varieties. The number of kinds of paste is most astonishing, and
one wonders why there are so many kinds and what is done with them. Fiorini
will tell you that each kind has its distinctive use. Some are for soups, some for
sauces, and all for special edibility. There are hundreds of recipes for cooking the
various pastes and each one is said to be a little better than the others, if you can
imagine such a thing.
Turn another corner after leaving Fiorini’s and look down into a basement.
You do not have to go to the country to see wine making. Here is one of the
primitive wine presses of Italy, and if you want to know why some irreverent
people call the red wine of the Italians “Chateau la Feet,” you have but to
watch the process of its making in these Telegraph Hill wine houses. The grapes
are poured into a big tub and a burly man takes off his shoes and socks and
emulates the oxen of Biblical times when it treaded out the grain. Of course
he washes his feet before he gets into the wine tub. But, at that, it is not a
pleasant thing to contemplate. Now you look around with wider and more
comprehensive eyes, and now you begin to understand something about these
strange foreign quarters in San Francisco. As you look around you note another
thing. Italian fecundity is apparent everywhere, and the farther up the steep
slope of the Hill you go the more children you see. They are everywhere, and
of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if
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