Roughing it De Luxe

by Irvin S. Cobb

For drawing the men, I would exploit the great cardinal fact that nowhere in the country—not even in Norfolk or Baltimore or New Orleans—can you get better things to eat than in San Francisco. For its size, I believe there are more good clubs and more good restaurants right there than in any other spot on the habitable globe. Particularly in the preparation of the typical dishes of the Coast do the San Francisco cooks excel; their cuisine is based on a sane American foundation, with a delectable suggestion of the Spanish in it, and sometimes with a traceable suggestion of the best there is in the Italian and the Chinese schools of cookery.

To one whose taste in oysters has been developed by eating the full-chested bi-valve of the Eastern seaboard and the deep-lunged, long-bodied product of the Louisiana bayous, the native oyster does not greatly appeal. A lot has been written and printed about the California oyster, but in my opinion he will always have considerable difficulty in living up to his press notices. It takes about a thousand of him to make a quart and about a hundred of him to make a taste. Even then he doesn't taste much like a real oyster, but more like an infinitesimal scrap of sponge where a real oyster camped out overnight once.

There is a dream of a little fish, however, called a sand dab—he is a tiny, flounder-shaped titbit hailing from deep water; and for eating purposes he is probably the best fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side are the hereditary princes of the crab family. They look like spread-eagles; and properly prepared they taste like Heaven. I often wonder what the crabsters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell—which is a quotation from Omar, with original interpolations by me. The domestic cheese of the Sierras is not without its attractions also, whether you eat it fresh or whether you keep it until its general aspect and prevalent atmosphere are such as to satisfy even one of those epicurean cheese-eaters who think that no cheese is fit to eat until you can't.

Another thing worthy of mention in connection with this California school of cookery is that you can pay as little as you please for your dinner or as much as you please. There are three standbys of the exchange editor that may be counted upon to appear in the newspapers about once in so often. One is the hoary-headed and toothless tale regarding the artist who was hired to renovate religious paintings in a church in Brussels, and turned in an itemized account including such entries as—"Correcting the Ten Commandments"; "Restoring the Lost Souls"; "Renewing Heaven"; and winding up with "Doing Several Odd Jobs for the Damned."

The second of the set comes out of retirement at frequent intervals—whenever some trusting soul runs across a time-stained number of the Ulster Gazette giving details of the death of George Washington—I wonder how many million copies of that venerable counterfeit were printed—and writes in to his home editor about it.

And the third, the most popular clipping of the three, concerns the prices that used to govern at the mining camps in the days of the early gold rush. The story that is most commonly quoted has to do with the menu of the El Dorado Hotel, at Placerville, where bean soup was a dollar a plate; hash, lowgrade, seventy-five cents; hash, eighteen-carat, a dollar—and so on down the list to seventy-five cents for two Irish potatoes, peeled.

The cost of living may have gone down subsequently in those parts, but it has gone back up again—at certain favored spots. If the Argonauts, those hardy adventurers who flung their gold round so regardlessly and were not satisfied unless they paid outrageously big prices for everything, could come back today they would have no cause to complain at the contemptible paucity of the bill after they had dined at any one of half a dozen ultra-expensive hotels that are to be found dotted along the Coast.

I append herewith a few items selected at random from the price card of a fashionable establishment in one of the larger Coast cities: caviar impérial d'Astracan, two dollars for a double portion; buffet Russe—whatever that is—ninety cents; German asparagus, a single helping, one dollar and forty cents; blue-point oysters, fifty cents; fifty cents for clams; Gorgonzola cheese, fifty cents a portion; and, in a land where peaches and figs grow anywhere and everywhere, seventy-five cents for an order of brandied peaches and fifty cents for an order of spiced figs. Even seasoned New Yorkers have been known to breathe hard on receiving a check for a full meal at certain restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

On the other hand, you can step round any corner in San Francisco and walk into that institution which people in other large cities are forever seeking and never finding—a table-d'hôte restaurant where a perfect meal is to be had at a most moderate price. The best Italian restaurant in the world—and I wish to say, after personal experience, that Sunny Italy itself is not barred—is a little place on the fringe of the Barbary Coast.

There is another place not far away where, for a dollar, you get a bottle of good domestic wine and a selection from the following range of dishes: Celery, ripe olives, green olives, radishes, onions, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, combination salad or crab-meat salad; soup—onion or consommé; fish—sole, salmon, bass, sand dabs, mussels or clams; entrées—sweetbreads with mushrooms, curry of lamb, calf's tongue, tripe with peppers, tagliatini a l'Italienne, or boiled kidney with bacon; vegetables—asparagus, string-beans and cauliflower; roast—spring lamb with green peas, broiled chicken or broiled pig's feet; dessert—rhubarb pie, ice cream and cake, apple sauce, stewed fruits, baked pear or baked apple, mixed fruits; cheese of three varieties, and coffee to wind up on.