Bohemian San Francisco / Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining.

by Clarence E. Edwords

Chicken a la Leon D'oro

Cut a spring chicken into pieces. Place these in a pan containing hot olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Turn the chicken until it is thoroughly browned, and add finely chopped green peppers. Let it cook awhile then add a finely chopped clove of garlic and a little sage. Put in a small glass of Marsala wine, tomato sauce and French mushrooms and let simmer for ten minutes. Before taking from the pan add half a tablespoonful of butter and serve on a hot plate.

Lazzarini also makes a specialty of snails, and they are well worth trying while you are experimenting with the unusual things to eat. The recipe for these is as follows:

Snails a la Bordelaise

Put ten pounds of snails in a covered barrel and keep for ten days. Then put in a tub with a handful of salt and a quarter of a gallon of vinegar. Stir for twenty minutes until a foam rises, then take out and wash thoroughly until the water runs clear. Put in a large pot a pint of virgin olive oil, four large onions and eight cloves of garlic, all chopped fine, and a small bunch of parsley, chopped fine. Put the pot over the fire and when the onions are browned stir in some white wine or Marsala and then put in the snails. Cover and let simmer for thirty-five minutes. While cooking add a pint of meat stock, a little butter and some anise seed. When done put in a soup tureen and serve. To remove the snails use small wooden toothpicks.

A Breath of the Orient

San Francisco's world-famed Chinatown, like the rest of the city, is changed since the big fire, and the Chinatown of today is but a reminiscence of the old Oriental city that was set in the midst of the most thriving Occidental metropolis—The City That Was. There has never been much of Chinatown that savored of Bohemianism, but it has always been the vogue for visitors to make a trip through its mysterious alleys, peering into the fearsome dark doorways, listening to the ominous slamming doors of the "clubs," and shuddering in a delightful horror at the recumbent opium smokers, pointed out to them by the industrious guide. And when they were taken into one of the gambling houses and shown the double doors, and the many contrivances used to prevent police interference with the innocent games of fan tan and then were shown the secret underground passage leading from one of the gambling houses to the stage of the great Chinese theatre, two blocks away, they went home ready to believe anything told them about "the ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," for they were sure "the heathen Chinee was peculiar."

Chinese restaurant life never appealed to Bohemians, and when it became necessary to entertain visitors with a trip to a Chinatown restaurant the ordinary service was of tea and rice cakes, served from lacquered trays, in gaudy rooms, and the admiring visitors could well imagine themselves in "far off Cathay."

Then came the fire and Chinatown, with the rest of the down-town portion of San Francisco, passed away. In the rebuilding the owners of the properties concluded to give the quarter a more Chinese aspect and pagoda like structures are now to be found in all parts of the section. The curiosity of the tourist is an available asset to Chinatown, and with queer houses and queerer articles on sale there is always plenty of uninitiated to keep the guides busy, but from a city of more than twenty-five thousand Orientals in the midst of an enlightened city—an Asiatic city that had its own laws and executed its criminals with the most utter disregard for American laws, it has changed into one of the most law-abiding parts of the great city. With the passing of the queue came the adoption of the American style of dressing, and much of the picturesqueness of the old Chinatown has disappeared.

But with the changed conditions there has come a change in the restaurant life of the quarter, and now a number of places have been opened to cater to Americans, and on every hand one sees "chop suey" signs, and "Chinese noodles." It goes without saying that one seldom sees a Chinaman eating in the restaurants that are most attractive to Americans. Some serve both white and yellow and others serve but the Chinese, and a few favored white friends.