the Fashion for, say, 35, no New Yorker who has not been there
would believe it. The San Francisco French dinner and the San
Francisco free lunch were as the Public Library to Boston or the stock
yards to Chicago. A number of causes contributed to this consummation.
The country all about produced everything that a cook needed and that
in abundance--the bay was an almost untapped fishing pond, the fruit
farms came up to the very edge of the town, and the surrounding
country produced in abundance fine meats, all cereals and all
vegetables.

But the chefs who came from France in the early days and liked this
land of plenty were the head and front of it. They passed on their art
to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chinese. Most of the French chefs
at the biggest restaurants were born in Canton, China. Later the
Italians, learning of this country where good food is appreciated,
came and brought their own style. Householders always dined out one or
two nights of the week, and boarding houses were scarce, for the
unattached preferred the restaurants. The eating was usually better
than the surroundings.

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
ragouts for gold dust. Each succeeding restaurant of the name has
moved further downtown; and the recent Poodle Dog 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.

For 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