little table in the back part of the room, where we could have a good
view of all the tables. Our table was large enough to seat four
comfortably, and presently, as the room became crowded, the proprietor,
with many excuses, asked if he could seat two gentlemen with us. They
were upper class Italians, exceedingly polite, and apologized profusely
for intruding upon us. In a few minutes another gentleman entered and
our companions at once began frantic gesticulations and called him to
our table, where room was made and another cover laid. Again and again
this occurred until finally at a table suited for four, nine of us were
eating, laughing, and talking together, we being taken into the
comradeship without question. When it came time for us to depart the
entire seven rose and stood, bowing as we passed from the restaurant.



Impress of Mexico

Running through all the fabric of San Francisco's history is the thread
of Mexican and Spanish romance and tradition, carrying us back to the
very days when the trooper sent out by Portola first set eyes on the
great inland sea now known as San Francisco Bay. It would seem that the
cuisinaire most indelibly stamped on the taste of the old San Franciscan
would, therefore, be of either Spanish or Mexican origin. That this is
not a fact is because among the earliest corners to California after it
passed from Mexican hands to those of the United States, were French and
Italian cooks, and the bon vivants of both lands who wanted their own
style of cooking. While the Spanish did not impress their cooking on San
Francisco, it is the cuisine of the Latin races that has given to it its
greatest gastronomic prestige, and there still remains from those very
early days recipes of the famous dishes which had their beginnings