If this sound egotistical we are sorry, for it is not meant in that way. We believe that each and every individual should judge for him or herself, considering ourselves fortunate that our ideas and tastes are held in common.
San Franciscans, both residential and transient, are a pleasure-loving people, and dining out is a distinctive feature of their pleasure. With hundreds of restaurants to select from, each specializing on some particular dish, or some peculiar mode of preparation, one often becomes bewildered and turns to familiar names on the menu card rather than venture into fields that are new, of strange and rare dishes whose unpronounceable names of themselves frequently are sufficient to discourage those unaccustomed to the art and science of cooking practiced by those whose lives have been spent devising means of tickling fastidious palates of a city of gourmets.
In order that those who come within our gates, and many others who have resided here in blindness for years, may know where to go and what to eat, and that they may carry away with them a knowledge of how to prepare some of the dishes pleasing to the taste and nourishing to the body, that have spread San Francisco's fame over the world, we have decided to set down the result of our experience and study of our Bohemian population and their ways, and also tell where to find and how to order the best special dishes.
Over North Beach way we asked the chef of a little restaurant how he cooked crab. He replied:
"The right way."
One often wonders how certain dishes are cooked and we shall tell you "the right way."
It is hoped that when you read what is herein written some of our pleasure may be imparted to you, and with this hope the story of San Francisco's Bohemianism is presented.
Clarence E. Edwords.
San Francisco, California,
September 22, 1914.
Our Toast
Not to the Future, nor to the Past;
No drink of Joy or Sorrow;
We drink alone to what will last;
Memories on the Morrow.
Let us live as Old Time passes;
To the Present let Bohemia bow.
Let us raise on high our glasses
To Eternity—the ever-living Now.