Meals that were marvels were served in tumbledown
little hotels. Most famous of all the restaurants
was the Poodle Dog. There have been no less than
four restaurants of this name, beginning with a frame
shanty where, in the early days, a prince of French
cooks used to exchange recipes for gold dust.
Each succeeding restaurant of the name has moved farther
downtown; and the recent Poodle Dog stands—or
stood—on the edge of the Tenderloin in
a modern five-story building. And it typified
a certain spirit that there was in San Francisco.
On the ground floor was a public restaurant where
there was served the best dollar dinner on earth.
It ranked with the best and the others were in San
Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night, almost
everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking.
Every one who was any one in the town could be seen
there off and on. It was perfectly respectable.
A man might take his wife and daughter there.
On the second floor there were private dining rooms,
and to dine there, with one or more of the opposite
sex, was risque but not especially terrible.
But the third floor—and the fourth floor—and
the fifth! The elevator man of the Poodle Dog,
who had held the job for many years and never spoke
unless spoken to, wore diamonds and was a heavy investor
in real estate.
There were others as famous in their way—Zinkaud’s,
where, at one time, every one went after the theatre,
and Tate’s, which has lately bitten into that
trade; the Palace Grill, much like the grills of Eastern
hotels, except for the price; Delmonico’s, which
ran the Poodle Dog neck and neck in its own line,
and many others, humbler, but great at the price.
To the visitor who came to see the city and who put
himself in the hands of one of its well-to-do citizens
for the purpose, the few days that followed were apt
to be a whirl of mirth and sight-seeing, made up of
breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, drives, little trips
across the bay, dashes down the peninsula to the polo
and country clubs, hours spent in Bohemia, trips around
the world among all the races of the habitable globe,
all of whom had their colonies in this most cosmopolitan
of American cities.
In club life the Bohemian stood first and foremost,
the famous club whose meeting place, with all its
art treasures, is now a heap of ashes, but which was
formerly ’Frisco’s head-centre of mirth.
Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax
advocate, when he was an impecunious scribbler on
the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest
place of resort in the Pacific metropolis.
