A bare recital of the terms of the recipe cannot bring to the uninitiated even a suspicion of the delightful aroma that comes from the cocoanut when its top is lifted, nor can it give the slightest idea of the delicacy of the savor arising from the combination of the cocoanut with young chicken. It is not a difficult dish to prepare, and if you cannot get it at any of the restaurants, and we are sure you cannot, try it at home some time and surprise your friends with a dish to be found in only one restaurant in the world. If you desire it at Coppa's on your visit to San Francisco you will have to telephone out to him in advance (unless he has succeeded in getting back to the city, which he contemplates) so that he can prepare it for you, and, take our word for it, you will never regret doing so.
Coppa has many wonderful dishes to serve, and he delights so much in your appreciation that he is always fearful something is wrong if you fail to do full justice to his meal. He showed this one evening when he had filled a little party of us to repletion by his lavish provision for our entertainment, and nature rebelled against anything more. To us came Coppa in tears.
"What is the matter with the chicken, Doctor? Is it not cooked just right?"
It was with difficulty that we made him understand that there was a limit to capacity, and that he had fed us with such bountiful hand we could eat no more. Even now when we go to Coppa's we have a little feeling of fear lest we offend him by not eating enough to convince him that we are pleased.
Coppa's walls were always adorned with strange conceits of the artists and writers who frequented his place, and after a picture, or a bit of verse had remained until it was too familiar some one erased it and replaced it with something he thought was better. We preserved one written by an unknown Bohemian. We give it just as it was:
Through the fog of centuries, dim and dense,
I sometimes seem to see
The shadowy line of a backyard fence
And a feline shape of me.
I hear the growl, and yowl and howl
Of each nocturnal fight,
And the throaty stir, half cry, half purr
Of passionate delight,
As seeking an amorous rendezvous
My ancient brothers go stealing
Through the purple gloom of night.
I've seen your eyes, with a greenish glint;
You move with a feline grace;
And when you are pleased I catch the hint
Of a purr in your throat and face.
Then I wonder if you are dreaming, too,
Of temples along the Nile,
Where you yowled and howled, and loved and prowled,
With many a sensuous wile,
And borrowed the grace you own today
From that other life in the far-away;
And if such dreams beguile.
I know that you sit by your cozy fire,
When shadows crowd the room,
And my soul responds to an old desire
To roam through the velvety gloom,
So stealthily stealing, softly shod,
My spirit is hurrying thence
To the lure of an ancient mystic god,
Whose magnet is intense,
Where I know your soul, too, roams in fur,
For I hear it call with a throaty purr,
From the shadowy backyard fence.
Bohemia of the Present
San Francisco's care-free spirit was fully exemplified before the ashes of the great fire of 1906 were cold. On every hand one could find little eating places established in the streets, some made of abandoned boxes, others of debris from the burned buildings, and some in vacant basements and little store rooms, while a few enterprising individuals improvised wheeled dining rooms and went from one part of the city to another serving meals.