Bohemian San Francisco

where to get it prepared and cooked the best. We must say that the finest fish we have eaten in San Francisco was not in the high-priced restaurants at all, but in a little, dingy back room, down at Fishermen's Wharf, where there was sand on the floor and all the sounds of the kitchen were audible in the dining room. The place was patronized almost solely by the Italian fishermen who not only know how to catch a fish but how it ought to be cooked. One may always rest assured that when he gets a fish in one of the Italian restaurants it is perfectly fresh, for there are two things that an Italian demands in eating, and they are fresh fish and fresh vegetables. At the Gianduja at Union and Stockton streets, one is certain to get fish cooked well and that it is perfectly fresh. The variety is not so good as at the Shell Fish Grotto, but otherwise it is just as good in every respect. At the Grotto there is a wonderful variety but the quantity is at the minimum because there, too, they will have no fish that has been twenty-four hours out of the water. One wonders how a full course dinner entirely of fish can be prepared, but if you will go to the Shell Fish Grotto you will find that it is done, and done well at that. Here you can get a good dinner for one dollar, or if you prefer it they have a Fish Dinner de Luxe for which they charge two dollars. Both are good, the latter having additional wines and delicacies. Down in Washington street, just off Columbus avenue, is the Vesuvius, an Italian restaurant of low price, but excellent cooking. A specialty there is fish which is always brought fresh from the nearby Clay street market as ordered, consequently is perfect. When you give your order a messenger is dis- FISH IN patched to the market and usually he THEIR brings the fish alive and the chef pre- VARIETY pares it in one of his many ways, for he is said to have more secrets about the cooking of fish than one would think it possible for one brain to contain. The trouble about this restaurant is that the rest of the menu does not come up to the fish standard, but if you desire a simple luncheon of fish there is no better place to get it. There are three things in which an Easterner will be disappointed in San Francisco, and these are oysters. Pacific Coast oysters fail in size, flavor and cooking, when compared with the luscious bivalve of the Atlantic, so far as the ordinary forms of preparation is concerned. Even fancy dishes, such as Oysters Kirkpatrick, would be better if made of the eastern oyster, not what they call the eastern oyster here, for that is a misnomer, but the oysters that grow in the Atlantic Ocean. Of the Pacific oysters the best is the Toke Point, that comes from Oregon. They are similar in size to the Blue Point, but lack the flavor. "When, in a San Francisco restaurant, you are asked what sort of oyster you will have, and you see the familiar names on the menu card, remember that these are transplanted oysters, and have lost much of their flavor in the transplanting, or else they are oysters that have been shipped across the continent and have thereby lost their freshness.