Located near the northeastern end of the San Francisco Peninsula, between the Presidio of San Francisco and the Mission San Francisco de Asis, was a Spanish settlement, Yerba Buena. This settlement was originally established as a trading post for ships visiting the Bay area. Yerba Buena grew to become the great city of San Francisco. The Alcalde or mayor of Yerba Buena issued a proclamation renaming the town San Francisco on January 30, 1847. In 1848 the population of the newly-named town of San Francisco was about 1,000.
View Of The Area Prior To The Discovery Of Gold
Containing A Summary Of The History Of All The Important Events Connected With It’s Great City
Published By D. Appleton & Company, New York
Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley by John Sutter on January 24, 1848. The Gold Rush in northern California led to one of the largest migrations in United States history with hundreds of thousands people coming to California. By the end of 1849 the population in California numbered over 100,000. The Gold Rush brought world wide attention to the area. California became the 31st state in the United States on September 8, 1850.
San Francisco quickly became the financial center of California, providing supplies, food and financial institutions to handle the mining and commercial interests of investors. Many merchants, shippers and investors traveled to San Francisco from the East Coast because of the Gold Rush.
Grape growing became a big business in the 1850s. The surge of European immigrants came with viticultural and winemaking skills, developing quality grapes and wines, and ultimately making California the largest producer of fine wines in the United States by the end of the decade. Northern California growers and vintners of all ethnic groups worked together to study soils, climates, and grape varieties for table grapes and wine production. San Francisco became known as the center of wine storage and distribution and the manufacturer of barrels and glass bottles.
By 1855, there were 325,000 grape vines in the state due to the demand created by the Gold Rush emigration. By the end of 1856, there were 1,500,000 grape vines planted. Historians credit James Warren, often referred to as the father of California agriculture for the advocacy of planting grape vines in California. Warren’s first headlines were “Cultivators of California! Plant Your Vineyards. Begin now…No better investment can be made.”
San Francisco Recognized As A Great Restaurant City Of The World
In 1855, three men, Frank Soule, John H. Gihon and James Nisbet, witnesses and participants in San Francisco’s growth as a city, write The Annals of San Francisco. They describe the culinary transformation of the city: “eating houses, of which there were an immense number in every portion of town. These were of every description, good, bad and indifferent.” The Annals have 800 pages based on their historical research.
Good cooks were so scarce that when banker and financier, Francois Louis Alfred Pioche (1817-1872), brings 40 chefs from Paris to San Francisco, all of them are hired immediately.
By 1869 San Francisco was recognized internationally as one of the great restaurant cities of the world. Alexandre Dumas, world famous food critic, declares: “After Paris, the city with the most restaurants was San Francisco. It has restaurants from every country, even China.” Wines continue to be imported from Europe, but California wines were rising in quality and often featured on the menus of fine restaurants.
By the mid-1870s San Francisco diners expected and enjoyed wine with their meals. Many California cities had high-quality restaurants, mainly French in inspiration. There were also excellent seafood and chop houses. Luxury hotels provided fine food and service that attracted people of wealth and social status. San Francisco’s bars also offered a broad range of fine food served with wine and spirits. The quality of bar food sometimes rivaled the restaurants.
As agriculture evolved with an understanding of soils, plants and weather, many diverse crops became successful commodities. A wider range of foods was available to people living in the cities during the 1880s. Restaurant menus from the late 19th Century show a wider selection of foods although meat and potatoes dominated many menus.
As the industrial revolution progressed, refrigerated rail cars and cold storage warehouses were developed with the use of mechanically frozen ice. Chicago beef and out-of-season produce were shipped by rail to other parts of the country. Cheese and butter were produced in factories instead of farms. And finally, the design and aesthetics of restaurants improved by utilizing electricity to provide brighter lighting and ventilation systems.
Many ethnic groups arrived in America bringing with them new cuisines and garden plants. They opened a variety of restaurants highlighting their own cuisine throughout the United States. French and Italian restaurants became very popular, Small ethnic restaurants often served free carafes of wine. However, not everyone was welcome at these restaurants. Segregation in the South excluded many people from dining in “white-owned” restaurants. As a result of anti-Chinese hostility in the West and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1883, many Chinese moved east to open Chinese restaurants in larger cities.
By the beginning of the 1900s, women started to patronize urban restaurants. In the past, women were excluded from restaurants unless they were escorted by men or family members. As urbanization and social change accelerated, the large cities including New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco became the leading cities for establishing new types of restaurants. There was a need to develop eating places with simple menus for the growing ranks of urban workers, both female and male, in cafes, cafeterias, German rathskellers, and tea rooms. Cooks, waiters, and even restaurant owners unionized. Diners worried about food safety and cleanliness; restaurant inspections by local governmental agencies became mandatory.
However, restaurants catering to the rich and famous were in high demand. Patrons wanted to enjoy fine cuisine and wines in lavish surroundings. Each city became known for their fine restaurants. In San Francisco it was The Old Poodle Dog.
Found at OpenSFHistory
From The Collection Of Bob Bragman. A 1906 Sunset Magazine Showing The Destruction Of The Poodle Dog Restaurant From The San Francisco Earthquake. Found At https://www.sfgate.com/food/history/article/One-of-San-Franciscos-most-famous-French-16538867.php
The Old Poodle Dog Restaurant
This was San Francisco’s most prestigious French restaurant between 1849-1922.
This notorious French restaurant, established in 1849, initially was a “Gold Rush” eatery, which meant it was nothing more than a shanty with a sanded floor and rough tables covered with oil table “cloths.” It was San Francisco’s first French restaurant, opened by Frenchmen P. Allarme and A.B. Blanco. The original name was “Le Poulet d’Or” but it was known as the Poodle Dog by the 49’ers who could not pronounce the name in French.
The Restaurant Moved From The Original Location To The Corner Of Bush And Dupont Streets In 1868
There the restaurant flourished with meals priced approximately at $1.00. Meals were served in the French country style at long tables on common serving dishes with salad towards the end of the meal and a house wine.
To eat at one of the city’s crown jewels was a real treat. If diners glanced up, they caught a view of the restaurant’s mascot – a black poodle – posed in various scenes across the ceiling fresco. The state-of-the-art kitchen featured a French cooking range with a broiler and a modern-day hood.
The Old Poodle Dog restaurant changed ownership many times from its inception during the Gold Rush days.
Another Move…
When Antonio Blanco became its proprietor in the late 1890s, he envisioned a new restaurant unlike anything San Francisco has ever seen. During the 1890s, the building that housed the newly created restaurant at Mason and Eddy Streets was six-stories with a separate bar and wine cellar in the basement. The wine cellar contained over 20,000 wines and was known as the Well.
Chef Calixte Lalanne was its chef de cuisine serving French haute cuisine; the Old Poodle Dog became the foremost French restaurant in town.
Each one of the six floors was devoted to different parlors offering significantly different epicurean delights.
- The first-floor dining room, lavishly decorated in the Rococo and Louis XIV styles, provided an elegant environment for a man to properly entertain his wife and daughter in public.
- In the intimate second-floor dining rooms, men would entertain their mistresses in private.
- The third, fourth and fifth floors provided private parlors accessible only by a side door and an elevator. Each suite contained an elegant bed, rich European Axminster carpets, a bathroom and telephone, along with a dining table and chairs.
- The sixth floor housed an opulent banquet room for up to 250 guests to celebrate.
This restaurant was destroyed in the famous San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906.
The Old Poodle Dog Is Revived And Reopened By A Group Of Experienced Restaurateurs In 1908
In 1908, a group of men decided to rebuild the Old Poodle Dog at a new location on Bush Street. The new owners included experienced restaurateurs J.B. Pon and Calixte Lalanne, John Bergez owner of Bergez’s Restaurant, Louis Coutard and Camille Mailhebuau, owners of Frank’s Restaurant. The new name introduced the restaurant as Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog.
This new restaurant was elegantly designed with five floors for dining and the top floor featuring a ballroom. The design of the upper floors echoed the past with a side door to each private dining room and suite as in the earlier establishment, and a birdcage elevator to transport the men and their “companions” upstairs. The new Old Poodle Dog thrived for the next 12 years until Prohibition.
The Prohibition Era is defined as January 17, 1920 through December 5, 1933. During this time period it became illegal to buy or sell wine, beer or spirits. It was not illegal to drink alcohol so in a desperate attempt to provide liquor and wines to their patrons, many restaurants tried to purchase every bottle in sight before the law took effect in 1920. However, Prohibition had many negative effects on restaurants which included a shift in focus on food instead of alcohol resulting in a loss of the main source of income and profit. The result was a new type of restaurant appeared. Soda fountains and luncheonettes became popular at former fine dining locations, and newly created speakeasies served their customers bite-sized canapes while they were mingling instead of a sit down meal.
Bergez-Frank’s Old Poodle Dog failed a little over two years after Prohibition began. In 1922, the Old Poodle Dog closed on April 15, 1922.
Great cuisine cannot be served without wine.
From WHP’s Collection Of Artifacts From The Old Poodle Dog Restaurant:
Postcard of Old Poodle Dog Restaurant
Object ID: WHP-EPH273
Materials: paper
Date: circa 1908
Menu Of Old Poodle Dog Restaurant
Object ID: WHP-EPH273
Materials: paper
Date: 1917
Wine Labels From Bottles Served At The Old Poodle Dog Restaurant
Object ID: WHP-EPH1-21
Materials: paper
Date: circa
Origin: United States
Originally, one of the owners put together this collection. The Wine History Project has four volumes, and there are 520 labels contained within these volumes that include:
California 84
French 117
German 50
Chilean 15
French Champagnes 36
French Cognacs 32
Ports and Sherries 35
Apertifs 31
Whiskeys 120
This collection of labels was originally provided by the heirs of the restaurant. The Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County obtained the collection of wine labels from Jim McCormick, California Wine Museum ‘s director and antique dealer in 2018. Jim curated the collection of viticultural objects.
Some of the labels found in Book 1 of our collection include the following “house” labels made for wine served at the final location of the Old Poodle Dog restaurant. (1908-1920)
Samples Of Some Of These Labels
Note: The labels for the “house” wines were printed by the San Francisco based Louis Roesch Printing Company. The company was located at 1886-1898 Mission Street, San Francisco. The building was quickly constructed after the 1906 earthquake.
