The San Francisco History Center is pleased to present author and food historian Erica J. Peters speaking about her newest book, San Francisco: A Food Biography on Thursday, May 22 at 6:30pm in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room at the Main Library.
As a special treat, "What's On the 6th Floor" invited Ms. Peters to be a guest blogger. Here she shares about doing food history research in the San Francisco History Center.
Researching in the San Francisco History Center - notes from Erica J. Peters
The San Francisco History Center is a quietly magical place, with wonderful finds in its files. On my very first visit, the staff kindly explained that my library card allowed me to search the San Francisco Chronicle Historical archives online from home – that was a revelation, and one which led to many more.
Take the Poodle Dog restaurant, one of the grand French restaurants from San Francisco’s Gilded Age. Twentieth-century sources dated the restaurant to the Gold Rush period, but confessed confusion about the unusual name. Was the restaurant named for the early owner’s poodle? Or had its French owners named it the “Poulet d’Or” (The Golden Chicken), until those syllables was mangled by gold miners to sound more like “Poodle Dog”? In contemporary newspapers I found no trace of any “Poulet d’Or,” but by 1866 the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the ‘Poodle Dog’ Rotisserie on Dupont street.
Tracing addresses, owners and chefs back through San Francisco city directories (also conveniently digitized through the San Francisco Public Library), I found that the restaurant started off in 1858 as the Union Rotisserie and Restaurant, and became chic due to the talents of its acclaimed French chef Edward Marchand. By 1865 the chef had opened his own restaurant (“Marchand’s”) on Kearny, while the Poodle Dog was becoming a San Francisco institution on Dupont. As the San Francisco Chronicle wrote:
"Ladies, have you ever heard of the 'Poodle Dog?' That is the charming and seductive haunt where your husbands spend their evenings when they deny themselves the pleasure of your society on the pretense that they have to attend 'the Lodge' or a 'mining meeting.' At the 'Poodle Dog' they indulge in elegant and expensive suppers, with...fast women, who lay their snares for pernicious married men.”
Lillie Hitchcock Coit liked to go to the Poodle Dog in these days, but then she was known as a fairly fast woman herself, with a fascination for firefighters. The History Center has Lillie’s manuscript diary from 1872, in which she described drinking at the Bank Exchange saloon and dining at the Poodle Dog on oysters, frogs, snipe, and capon vol-au-vent, topped off with some ice cream and apple tart. Her diary also mourned the passing of Edward Marchand that year, as did the San Francisco Chronicle:
San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 18, 1872, p. 3.
 |
| Poodle Dog Menu & Wine List |
Having gotten this far in my research, I was delighted to discover early Poodle Dog menus in the San Francisco Ephemera Collection. The menus come from different incarnations of the restaurant. One beautiful Poodle Dog menu was produced by by the printer Louis Roesch just before the 1906 earthquake; it featured charming illustrations of poodles, along with Roesch’s pert projection of the restaurant back to 1849.
 |
| Old Poodle Dog menu cover, 1908 |
Another menu dated from 1908, when several French restaurateurs joined forces to open Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog, whose name referred to three beloved restaurants destroyed in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire. Louis Coutard had been the famous chef of Frank’s Rotisserie, and he was expected to be the famous chef at the new venture. Sadly, he died a few months before the new restaurant opened its doors. When Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog did open, the restaurateurs hired Roesch to design the menu—but this time without poodles.
 |
| Old Poodle Dog menu interior, 1908 |
 | |
| Old Poodle Dog menu interior, 1908 |
Golden gate Park and Golden gate Bridge both of them my favorite attractions to have a joyous time period. I am glad to tell you that recently have an adoring time period at tours from sfo and love to go there again when I have enough budget.
ReplyDelete