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

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.
6