Bohemian San Francisco: Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining.Edwords, Clarence E. (Clarence Edgar)
History
Bohemian San Francisco: Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining.
Edwords, Clarence E. (Clarence Edgar)
Cooking; Hotels -- California -- San Francisco
San Francisco's Latin quarter is appealing, enticing and hypnotizing. Go
there and you will learn why San Francisco is a bohemian city. You will
find out that so many things you have thought important are really not
at all worth while. Go there and you will find the root of Bohemian
restaurants. These people have studied gastronomy as a science, and they
have imparted their knowledge to San Francisco, with the result that the
Bohemian spirit enters into our very lives, and our minds are broadened,
and our views of life and our ideas have a wider scope. It is because of
this condition, born on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, that we are drawn
out of depressing influences, out of the spirit of self-consciousness,
and find a world of pleasure, innocent and educational, the inspiration
for which has been handed down through generations of Latina since the
days of early Roman empire, which inspiration is still a power for good
because it takes people out of themselves and places them where they can
look with understanding and speak the language of perception. Little
Italy's charm has long been recognized by artists and writers, and many
of them began their careers which led to fame and fortune in little
cheap rooms on Telegraph Hill. Here have lived many whose names are now
known to fame, and to name them would be almost like a directory of
world renowned artists and writers. Here is still the memory of Bret
Harte and Mark Twain. Here is where Keith had his early studio.
Cadenasso, Martinez, and many others know these slopes and love them.
To all these and many more the Latin Quarter of San Francisco possessed
a charm they could find nowhere else, and if one desire to bring a
saddened look to the faces of many now living elsewhere it is but
necessary to talk of the good old days when Bohemia was on Telegraph
Hill in San Francisco. Here they had their domicile, and here they
foregathered in the little restaurants, whose claims to merit lay
chiefly in the fact that they were rarely visited by other than the
Italians of the quarter and these Bohemians who lived there.
Here was the inspiration of many a good book and many a famous picture
whose inception came from thoughts that crystallized amid these
surroundings, and here many a needy Bohemian struggled through the lean
days with the help of these kind-hearted Latina. Here they, even as we,
were taught something of the art of cooking.
Of course, if one desire to learn various methods of preparing food, it
is necessary to keep both eyes open and to ask many questions, seeking
the information that sometimes comes from unlooked for sources. Even at
that it is not always a good idea to take everything for granted or to
accept every suggestion, for you may meet with the Italian vegetable
dealer who is so eager to please his customers that he pretends a
knowledge he does not possess. We discovered him one day when he had on
display a vegetable that was strange to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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