Bohemian San Francisco

Accepting Luna's as the best type of the Mexican restaurant of the days before the fire, our inquiry developed the fact that the dish on which he specialized was chili reinas, and this is the recipe he used in their preparation: CHILIS Roast large bell peppers until the skin REINAS turns black. Wash in cold water and rub off the blackened skin. Cut around the stem and remove the seed and coarse veins. Take some dry Monterey cheese, grated fine, and with this fill the peppers, closing the end with a wooden toothpick. Prepare a batter made as follows: Beat the yolks and whites of six eggs separately, then mix, and stir in a little flour to make a thin batter. Have a pan of boiling lard ready and after dipping the stuffed pepper into the batter dip it into the lard. Remove quickly and dip again in the batter and then again in the lard where it is to remain until fried a light, golden brown, keeping the peppers entirely covered with the boiling lard. Take the seeds of the peppers, one small white onion and two tomatoes and grind all together into a pulp, add a little salt and let cook ten minutes. When the chilis are fried turn the remainder of the batter into the tomatoes and boil twenty minutes, then turn this sauce over the peppers. This is a most delicious dish and can be varied by using finely ground meat to stuff the peppers instead of the cheese. Mexican restaurants of the present day in San Francisco are a delusion, and unsatisfactory. Much has been said and more printed regarding San Francisco's Barbary Coast — much of truth and much mythical. Probably no other individual district has been so instru- ON THE mental in giving to people of other BARBARY parts of the country an erroneous COAST idea of San Francisco. It is generally accepted as a fact that in Barbary Coast Vice flaunted itself in reckless abandon before the eyes of the world, showing those things usually concealed behind walls and under cover of the darkness. According to the purists here youth of both sexes was debauched, losing both money and souls. To speak of seeing Barbary Coast brought furtive looks and lowered voices, as if contamination even from the thought were possible. No slumming party was completed without a visit to the "Coast," after Chinatown's manufactured horrors had been shuddered at. One cannot well speak of the Barbary Coast without bringing into consideration the Social Evil, for here was concentrated dozens of the poor unfortunates of the underworld, compelled to eke out miserable existence through playing on the foibles and vanities of men, or seek oblivion in a suicide's grave. We do not propose to discuss this phase of Barbary Coast as that is not a part of Bohemianism. We have visited the Coast many times, at all hours of the night, and beyond the unconcealed license of open caresses we have seen nothing shocking to our moral sense that equalled what we have seen in Broadway, New York, or in some of the most fashionable hotels and restaurants of San Francisco on New Year's Eve. Dancing, singing and music — all that is embodied in the "wine, women and song" of the poets, was to be found there, biit it was open, and had none of the veiled suggestion to be found in places considered among the best.