>> i am honored to be speaking here since the san francisco public library has facilitated so much of my research, let me start by seeing that i am a relatively new arrival to the bay area and i have lived here for less than 20 years. i have read the book, like the cook's tour of san francisco and a another book, and so i also read through the city's newspaper archives looking for food terms and i poured over the directories and this is the result? the san francisco food biography, and the two main points that i try to make in the book are that san francisco has always been an international city. it faces out to the pacific ocean and it has influences and people who come to it from all over. so the food influences are international. and so the second point is that the trends that we sometimes consider new, the interest in fresh, local food, the kos poll

tan attitude towards dining and these go all the way back to the gold rush, there was a gap of 60 years, when the city was trying to tell a different story about itself and i will come back to that later in the talk. the city was trying to tell a simpler story and it ended up cutting out a lot of the richness in the history, during the gold rush, in 1849, many of those who were unable to mine for gold, for whatever reason, or were too wise to mine for gold made a good living mining the minings and catering to the desire to consume when they were living in san francisco. and restaurants were a great setting for this because dining in public provides an opportunity to show off what you can afford and you can treat your friends, you can smug your enemies and it is great. so restaurants often served many different kinds of cuisine so the people did not have to choose which one to go to, it was easy to spend, about $10 which is about $300 for us in

our money on diner out, let me set the scene with an eye witness description of the restaurant in gold rush san francisco by one of the miners who was there, there are eating houses to suits the tastes and pockets of people of all variety of means and of every nation. the eating houses are long buildings, with two rows of tables placed parallel to each other, extending the length of the room. the sides of the ceilings are covered with calico instead of paper and the bars at the end of the roof and the kitchen is underneath, the fair, so i am quoting the miner of the most heterogenious kind and the characters are placed at the table at the same time, boil and roasted meets, salted and potted meets, curry stews, and molasses are served up on small dishes arranged on the table.

this miner william shaw said that at several hours you will hear a loud beating of gongs and ringing of bells and everyone would rush to their favorite eatery and your table mate would pause to take out his chewing tobacco and stick it in his pocket or hat and next to his plate and everyone would start to attack the spread eating as fast as they could before someone else ate it all and finished the meals in ten minutes or less, he added that molasses is a favorite fixing and eaten with everyone, some of the lesser neither use fork or spoon, but the serving to the mouth, liquids and solids with surprising velocity, when dinner was over, you got up to let the next group, and you rescued your tobacco from wherever you stashed it and shaw went on to the bus to eating houses are those kept by celestials that is the chinese and the dishes are mostly

curries hash and fricase served up in small dish and they are exceedingly pallatable and so that caught my eye, and the best eating houses in san francisco are those kept by celestials but they were serving stakes and pork chops as often as they are serving anything that we two think of chinese food, one miner in the summer of 1849 said that some of the eating houses are kept by the china men and served up in the true american style with the knives, and forks and spoons, he praised the coffee at these restaurant and the new york tribute correspondent believe that the chinese were making the best coffee and order food as well as chinese food. one of these restaurants was called the canton on jackson street, where ryan ate there in 1849 and was astonished to see

the neat arrangement and cleanliness of the place and the excellence of the table and the moderate charges. and as i have always been or as i always been given to understand that these people were of dirty habits he said i am grad identified to be able to fair testimony to the injustice. chinese restaurant also hosted ground banquets to which they invited newspaper editors and politician and businessmen and trying to build the good relations with the white community and they would sit the white people, with the chinese people with charming chinese people to help to show them what the foods were and how to use the chop sticks and just explaining how to eat chinese food appropriately so that the people would not have to order the stakes and pork chops when they were in the chinese restaurants. it turns out that the chinese in the river delta in china had been cooking for western visitors for 100 years because there was a lot of trade there and so it is not surprising

that the ones who came to america were able to transfer the skills to san francisco. sadly, i don't have a picture of french restaurants during the gold rush period so we have a pause here, the french restaurants took a different approach and not aiming to make whatever the food the customers were used to and instead they tried to promote the idea that the french food was the best kind of food and the french restaurants were among the street, and grant avenue in what became known as the french town district of san francisco for a while. and some of the restaurants had very french names, cafes and paris and or things like napolean that were associated with the french but others just put french restaurant over the door and entrusted the customers to figure it out and the same as poodle dog which started off as the union rotisserie and its own restaurant before it got its

own name. french san franciscans did sometimes acknowledge their chinese rivals in the restaurant business, one french booster said in 1854, the chinese showed up here with their pots and pans and opened the first restaurants. but it did not take us long to over shadow these preparers of the birds nets, the french culinary arts are appreciated all over the world and even the coursest tastebuds far off in the pacific coast that is us that he is talking about, still favor us and enjoy our ways of preparing all sorts of food even with ingredients unfamiliar, in the beginning he says that the french canned goods were deexpensed as if they were essential to survival, french restaurant still served canned truffle partridge and canned peas, but now they serve them along other

local dishes. so these french restaurants were serving food out of cans in the beginning but soon established the relationships to get the better products locally for most of the ingredients that they needed. even though the french restaurant were at the forefront of the scene, critics expressed anxiety about the quality of the ingredients since the french cooking is elaborate sauces some people worry that the less than fresh food was disguised in that way, one fro*n french restaurant reviewer liked to go to the restaurant but thought that the french chefs with the clean white hats were just covering up for the black, hat, odor kitchen in the rear where the actual cooking is done. in addition to these restaurants there were also plain american eateries or boarding houses where the people could go to hang out with the people who came from

the same part of america that they came to, a new jersey house, a rhode island house and the st. louis house and the oregon house and there were other nationalities getting in on the mexican scene, spanish, buddhist, and except for the french restaurants most of them took the eclectic approach, and served the food next to each other as long as they did not look too hard to make. a lot of these restaurant at the beginning in did not have menu you ate what the cooks put on the table or they had a board that they would write today's specials on and the ward house, thank goodness for the ward house in december of 1849, they actually did have a printed menu and so we have some sense of what people might have been able to eat in these restaurants and it lists oxtail soup for a dollar and steak for a dollar and roast pork with apple sauce for $1.25 and baked

trite and anchoves and fresh california eggs, each a dollar. and a jelly omlet down below during the omlet for $3 and a jelly is $2. so, on these expensive eggs, people often have heard about high town fry and i want to explain it because it is a great gold rush story and a lot of san francisco now offer the dish. it is basically a scramble of eggs and oysters so what is the big deal, these are foods that you could not get out of the mining country and that is where the miners when they were digging in the mines were digging of this and they could get the dried or canned oysters but not fresh, eggs were expensive in mining country and in san francisco, a dollar each but in the mining country you would have to pay two or three dollars for each egg and there

is a story that the friers of a convicted criminal who created the ingredients with the last super to postpone the execution and that is a 20th century story there is no evidence that it was a real criminal, but it is a great story and it conveys the idea that the ingredients were so hard to get in the mining country and i think that the reason that the tourists like to order it today, is the high cost of living in the bay area, or visiting the bay area, becomes easier to face, when you consider the miners paying out their hard earned goal for an overpriced oyster scramble. during the gold rush days, san francisco had a lot more men than woman it was quite an adventure getting out here and respectable woman might think twice before heading out to such a rough and ready town where most of the trees were unpaved and turned to mud quickly, when the restaurant or

bars could find women to serve as host teses that brought in business, they better exploit that quickly because the women will be married off within a week. so you can see the women there, the hostesses of this lunch, the three women in the back there. most of them relied on free lunch to bring in the customers if they couldn't get women, or if they had women, saloons were not allowed to offer free drinks and charge for food, but they could charge for drinks and put out a free spread of sandwich meats and cheeses and green turtle soup or clam chow der as well as salty areas such as nuts to uncourage people to pay for more drinks, despite the salty food, people came in for the free lunch and did not buy a drink, lofers.

certain kinds were considered better than others, with the mining excitement in the city, the city felt that there was a speculation and embraced that culture, if you were lucky today you might be out of luck tomorrow and so there was a feeling of fell ship for those who could not currently afford to pay for their meal and the saloons were happier to tolerate the people who were high spenders before, maybe they will be in the future when their luck turned, if you wore out your welcome at the free lunch buffet, you could buy street food and that was pretty cheap. san francisco became known for its vendors in the 1880s and 1890s, and they would call out to passers by, tomorrow is tamales fresh, to let everyone know what these were, the chronicle reported, that the tamale is eaten in a small way

by persons of all classes, in the city. there were certain recklessness is often necessary before one can make one up's mind, robert putnan who was the founder of the california chicken company decided to send the vendors out in the clean, white uniform rather than in the mexican outfits that the other vendors were wearing and this way they would seem more higenic, somehow seeing them in a clean outfit made them think that they actually had chicken. and this is famous for being the birth place of pisco punch from the gold rush days, ships came to san francisco under the bottom of south america and as they passed peru the ships would restock there at the point of pisco and one of the things that they would get would be the white grape brandy

which was called after the port that it came from. and pisco brandy had a very harsh edge to it and it was suitable at the time for the frontier town that was san francisco during these gold rush days, but at the end of the gold rush, a second wave of mining wealth hit san francisco and there is a discovery of silver over in the load in nevada, and the city's gold rush dining cuisine had been rough. and rough, like the brandy. and but in the 1860s, this new influx of money and investment in the silver mines, created a more sophisticated urban culture and in this more sophisticated era in the 1880s actually nickel who is the man in the tie and the dark suit, all the way on the left of the photo, he was, he ran the bank exchange saloon and he popular

a way to drink this, and the chronicle was to enter the side port tals with a thrill of unholy delight and drink one or even two pisco punches and that was not regarded as drinking in the common or the garden sense of the term but just, seeing life. like eating chop sui in china town, so i love that quote. so if you make it, you could tell that it had simple syrup and pine apple, and chunks that is easy to tell and so they were soon serving their own version of the famous punch but no one could figure out how they smoothed out the roughness of the brandy and how he made it so delightfully smooth going down and had a kick after it

got down. and so, i can speak up for the historians and a historian is the person who tracked down the missing ingredient in 1973, and the gum arabic made from the acashia tree, john lantus who is the man who revealed the secret, he had been a manager at the bank exchange saloon under nicole and maybe, nicole gave him the formula and maybe he just sort of paid attention and noticed that there were supplies of gum arabic that were being dropped off and as i said during this period, and starting in the 60s and 70s there is a burst of cash and financial excitement and the people were seizing the opportunities to invest in the silver mines that seemed hot that way and inside information made the most money, of course, but many people were made to feel rich for a time. some of the people who made a great deal of money were the

ones who run the auction restaurant in the financial district and that had opened in 1949 and became a hip place to eat lunch in the 1860s. and all of the mining insiders would eat there and the restaurant's back door opened on to the famous washington market which is the largest market and cheeses and a wide assortment of game and polt tri, and radishes, and leaks and many more, and even in the winter, this market had everything. the owners of the auction lunch william obrian and james flood, they kept their ears open and when they thought that someone had some useful information about which mines were doing well they encourage them to drink freely and to speak freely where they might be able to hear him, oryan and flood traded all of the information and became some of the richest people in san francisco.

daniel oconnor who is one of the founders of the bohemian club loved the restaurant seen during this period, there is a charm about the restaurant life of san francisco possessed by no other city on the continent he wrote in 1891, it is a mosaic with a dozen italy restaurant not even in paris is there a greater variety of french restaurant, germany, spain, mexico, portugal, china and japan, all offer to the wondering children the dishes that are associated with the land of their birth and everyone got to eat in all of these restaurant trying each other's cuisine, he loved eating in good company and went so far as to say solitary dining is so death and those that can bear it just as those that can bear vegetarianism but they are the exceptions.

when some of these french restaurant like the poodle dog, they began to try to differentiate themselves from the crowd, offering a higher class experience, and offering extensive imported wines and elaborate dishes and seating people and just their own party and not a big communal table. and here is a picture and the french restaurant served the dishes like patte... [ speaking in a foreign language ] >> they had another attraction, and they were infamous as a place that you could take your mistress to. they had private rooms, and these rooms that you could eat without being seen together in public. and just a little more of the piano in the corner so that you could entertain yourself, it

comes out that occasionally was asked to go to the private rooms as well and they could get an adventure and try these meals without risking a scandal and nice women did not go out to eat in the public restaurant in the 19 century but sometimes they did get out and did not get caught doing it. when these restaurant became know for having private seats upstairs, as an actual bedroom upstairs at the restaurant and they had a whole floor of bedrooms. and they said, ladies have you ever heard of the poodle dog, this is 1869, that is the charming and seductive haunts when your husbands attend, what they say is a mining meeting, they induj in the supers and the rarest wines and the fast women. the poodle dog and you can see the poodle dog in the right corner and has a champagne

bottle. it was a good time for eating out in san francisco and these were the good days, the transcontinental rail rail and the discovery of the come stock and the opening of the tunnel and these were the times when the fortune made a millionaire of a man today and a pauper tomorrow and they made the money easily and spent it in the same way and the best of everything that the world produced was at their order they could pay for it. men who a few years before were satisfied with pork and beans, and bacon and hard bread and they became good lifers and educated and there was only one poodle dog. but that is of course, in the poodle dog brochure. one story from 1870, described a man who had a grand about the poodle dog, fried soul, and a fillet of beef, and together, all of that with a bottle of (inaudible) and unfortunately after he finished his super

with a nice cup, he experienced the disagreable sensation of discovering that he only has six bits left after paying for his dinner, about 75 cents and this say story not a report, french restaurants had a image of a up scale place worth spending the last dollars on and the luck will turn around and you will become rich again. unfortunately, when the city's luck changed again it was for the worse, there was a terrible earthquake and fire of 1906. and in the early 20th century, san francisco becomes known for other foods, than this cuisine, san francisco becomes known for fisherman's wharf and for china town dishes and for sour dough bread. but none of those tifts as far as the research shows, none of those taste goes back to the 19th century in san francisco,

they all became popular after the earthquake, when the city is desperately trying to come up with a simple way of selling the city to the tourist industry. and simple iing, and it is different from what you would get in boston or new york and coming up with the distinctive dishes, that was for this market. these became associated with san francisco, right at this moment for marketing reasons. north and italy ans came to san francisco and had a talent for fishing and liked eating fish stew, they called it chupen. the first mention in the san francisco press, of this dish, came in storis about this colorful fisherman community and there is a reporter in 1901 who spent a day with the fisherman in search of this colorful story and gets the

honor of being the first person to try to stall it in the newspaper, she writes it chespini, and you can tell that it is the same dish, because she gives a recipe for it. and she went on to say that it tastes much better than it sounds and if you go out on a fishing boat if you are not actually feeling ill you should definitely have some. and but the way that she describes it makes it sound like her leadership and the people reading the chronicle in 1901 would not have known about this dish, she is introducing them to it. another dish that became associated with san francisco, after the earthquake is sour dough bread and this is the biggest surprise for me in doing the research for this book, california miners do not make the sour dough bread, they are going back and forth and they have baking soda and they make pancakes but they do not

take the time to make sour dough bread, there are miners in alaska and very remote and far from civilization and they do have to keep the starter in the pots that they wear underneath their clothes so it does not freeze and it is true it is just not in california, these alaska miners are nicknamed sour doughs. the second problem with the myth, is that nobody talks about a special san francisco taste to the bread in the 190th century as far as i can tell and i have been looking, there say chronicle story on the city's bread industry from 1904, and this is the first time that i can find anyone talking about that special

delicious taste. and french bread is entirely different from italy an bread, both are sour dough and should take sour, the french man works his bread

something special in the bread but nobody else noticed but once they needed a way to market the city because of the earthquake and because the guy said that there was a special taste and the bakers picked up on that and then they started amping up the sourness of the bread because you can do that. you can make it taste hoefr you like, and so by the 1930s, we have two different kinds of bread and the same will sell a french bread and the sour dough and before that, in the 30s i can't find places that say that we offer both, i just see them offering french bread and in the 20th century, people say that it is delicious, ur