The Palace Hotel opened in San Francisco
in 1875, having been built at a cost of five million dollars. It
immediately became a center for stylish entertainment. San
Francisco of the 1870s was already a legendary gastronomic center
famous for its imported French chefs and opulent dining rooms. The
culinary artistry of the city was concentrated in its great hotels,
the setting for the high living of the times.
Bankrolled by William Ralston, financier and gourmand, the Palace
Grill Room was looked upon as the leading restaurant on the west
coast and its first chef, Jules Harder, as the region’s authority
on food. Harder was the first in a long line of gifted cooks responsible
for the contributions to San Francisco’s knowledge and admiration
of French high cuisine. He was later followed by the gifted Ernest
Arbogast. When Arbogast retired after twenty years of service, the
reputation and tradition of San Francisco’s premier dining
room was maintained by his successor, Jules Dauvillier.
Originally the chefs of the Palace adopted the formal French menu,
written in French and following customary continental course arrangement.
The special occasion menus and the enormous banquet menus that survive
from the Palace Hotel, list an overwhelming number of dishes: roasts,
soups, game, fish, cakes, puddings, pates, and fruits -- many of
which are unfamiliar and alien to the modern diner. These menus
reflect not only the foods of the past, but also the wealth and
social status of the diners. In the late 19th century, sophistication
meant dining on rich French haute cuisine.
The Palace Hotel menus presented here illustrate a great deal of
variation, change, and experimentation during the later half of
the 19th century. The menus became less restricted by rigid gastronomic
rules. The wide variety of styles, suggest that the chefs of the
Palace struggled to reshape the menu from an imported expression
of French ideas on dining to a more American expression of dining
and fine cooking. French culinary terms were replaced by a greater
use of English and the structure of the meal lost some of its starched
formality.
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