Cheap Eats in the Summer of Love

Looove the logo!

Hardworking immigrants who operate small establishments, serving heartfelt food at living wage prices? That’s our favorite thing these days in San Francisco right? Really, there is some truth to the saying that there is nothing new under the sun. We've always been a food city.

In 1969 R. B. Bread was a writer for the Examiner-Chronicle and a little book called “The San Francisco Underground Gourmet: An Irreverant Guide to Dining in the Bay Area.” His specialty was finding “different and excellent eateries” that were “small and modest.” He championed the mom n' pop joints that were overlooked by most publications. At the time, “ethnic” foods were all over the city but not nearly in the numbers we think of as normal today. While now you see Bernal Hill three year olds chowing down on octopus at any given sushi joint, in 1969 Read had to spend half his time explaining what things were before he could tell you where you should eat them!

So why on earth did I pick up an ethnic food restaurant guide from 1969? There were two things that made me plunk down my four dollars for the book: one, Read proclaims that “San Franciscans need a restaurant guide” due to the fact that for all of San Franciscans “heady interest in the subject” there was very little exploring outside of certain comfort zones. Can you imagine? Us needing a restaurant guide? Two, Read includes “Gay” as an ethnic food category, right between Frisco and German! He acknowledges that most gays are not “glamorous theatrical personages” but “wage earners in humdrum and humble occupations” who needed a place to go be themselves, where they could be free from discrimination. In a sign of the times, while he only finds three Korean restaurants worth mention he lists almost three pages of “Gay” restaurants. Can you imagine his joy cruising the Richmond today? 

Very few of his haunts remain, but some like Lois the Pie Queen hold fast and have changed little. Others like Tadich Grill remain but are clearly out of the budget conscious realm that got them in the book.

While apparently Read was a “well-known San Francisco epicure and bon vivant,” a “world traveler, journalist and resource economist,” I haven’t been able to find much about him. But I think it’s pretty clear, with his ‘get out there and find good food in small places’ mentality he would undoubtedly be a food blogger if he were on the scene today.

EB

Comments

[Elle Clark]

quit making me hungry. want squid NOW