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
Shrimps, alive and active, crayfish, clams, squid and similar sea food
was in profusion and sold at prices on a parity with that of the fish.
As the day wore on the early buyers were replaced by those who knew of
the free fish market and came to get good supplies for their money. Here
were boarding-house keepers, unmistakable anywhere, Bohemians in hard
luck who remembered that they could get good food here at a minimum of
price, and came now while on the down turn of the wheel. As a human
interest study it was better than a study of fish. Fishermen's Wharf is
where the independent fishermen bring their catches to San Francisco,
but it is not where the city's great supply comes in. To see that we had
to go along the docks until we came to the Broadway wharf where
Paladini, the head of the fish trust, unloads his tugs of their tons and
tons of fish. It is not nearly so interesting to look at, but it gives a
good idea of what comes out of the sea every day to supply the needs of
San Francisco and the surrounding country. These tugs bring in the
catches of dozens of smaller boats manned by fishermen who are toiling
out beyond the heads, and up the two great rivers. From far out around
the Farallones, from up around the Potato Patch with its mournful fog
bell constantly tolling, from down the coast as far as Monterey Bay
where fish are in such abundance that it is said they have to give a
signal when they want to turn around, from up the rivers, come fish to
the man who has grown from the owner of a small sail boat to be the
power who controls prices of all the fish that go to the markets of the
city.
By the time we finished with Paladini's fish we felt ready for breakfast
and took a car down to Davis and Pacific street where we found Bazzuro's
serving breakfast to dozens of market gardeners who had finished their
unloading, and there, while partaking of the fresh fish we had brought
from Fishermen's Wharf, we saw another phase of San Francisco's early
morning life. Here were gardeners who came in the darkness of early
morning to supply hucksters, small traders and a few thrifty people who
knew of the cheapness, and in Columbo market they drove their great
wagons and discharged their day's gathering of vegetables of all kinds.
But a few steps away is the great fruit market of the early morning and
here tons of the finest fruits are distributed to the hundreds of wagons
that crowd the street to such an extent that it takes all the ingenuity
of experienced policemen to keep clearway for traffic. Threading their
way in and out between the wheels and the heels of horses, were men and
women, all looking for bargains in food. Amid a din almost deafening
business was transacted with such celerity that in three hours the
streets were cleared, fruits and vegetables sold and on their way to
distant stands, and the tired policemen leaning against friendly walls,
recuperating after the strenuous work of keeping order in chaos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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