FoodNet

Bohemian San Francisco

1914

Page 2

Presented as published in 1914. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
CITY in Arabian Nights Talcs, 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. But the stepping across the street and one passes from one land to the other, finding all the peculiar characteristics of the various countries as indelibly fixed as if they were thousands of miles away. Speech, manners, customs, costumes and religions change with startling rapidity, and as you enter into the life of the nation you find that each has brought the best of its gastronomy for your delectation. San Francisco has called to the world for its best, and the response has been so prompt that no country has failed to send its tribute and give the best thought of those who cater to the men and women who know. This aggregation of cuisinaire, gathered where is to be found a most wonderful variety of food products in highest state of excellence, has made San Francisco the Mecca for lovers of gustatory delights, and this is why the name of San Francisco is known wherever men and women sit at table. It has taken us years of patient research to learn how these chefs j)repare their combinations of fish, Hesli, fowl, and herbs, in order that we might put them down, giving recipes of dishes whose memories linger in the minds of world wanderers, and to which their SAN FRANCISCO thoughts revert with a sigh as they partake of unsatis- factory viands in other countries and other cosmopol- itan cities. Those to whom only the surface THE GOOD of things is visible are prone to ex- GRAY press wonder at the love and enthu- CITY siasm of the San Franciscan for his home city. The casual visitor cannot understand the enchantment, the mystery, the witchery that holds one; they do not know that we steal the hours from the night to lengthen our days because the gray, whispering wraiths of fog hold for us the very breath of life; they do not know that the call of the wind, and of the sea, and of the air, is the inspiration that makes San Fran- cisco the pleasure-ground of the world. It is this that makes San Francisco the home of Bohemia, and whether it be in the early morning hours as one rises to greet the first gray streaks of dawn, or as the sun drops through the Golden Gate to its ocean bed, so slowly that it seems loth to leave; whether it be in the broad glare of noon-day sun, or under the daz- zling blaze of midnight lights, San Francisco ever holds out her arms, wide in welcome, to those who see more in life than the dull routine of working each day in order that they may gain sufficient to enable them to work again on the morrow. BOHEMIAN Bohemia! What vulgarities are perpetrated in thy name! How abused is the word! Because of a miscon- ception of an idea it has suffered THE LAND more than any other in the English OF language. It has done duty in de- BOHEMIA scribing almost every form of license and licentiousness. It has been the cloak of debauchery and the excuse for sex degrada- tion. It has been so misused as to bring the very word into disrepute.