The smörgaåsbord is regionally famous and attracts to the Bonanza such notables as John Dos Passos, General Mark Clark, Governor Pittman, Johnny Weissmuller, Alice Terry, and the adjacent Roger Butterfield. The last time your reporter stuffed himself with smoked ham and Norwegian herring washed down with aquavit, Judith Anderson at the next table was proudly displaying a complicated and intensely Victorian silver cruet stand she had just acquired at the antique shop in the Silver Dollar Hotel down in C Street. The presence of the Bonanza makes it possible to hunt antiques and atmosphere at Virginia City and become handsomely victualed as well as sluiced, a circumstance already liberally provided for by at least twenty saloons in which President Grant is reported to have tarried, much as General Washington is reported to have slept in all those beds.
A comparatively new San Francisco restaurant worthy of the attention of gastronomic purists, since it makes no obeisance in the direction of atmosphere and relies altogether on the not inconsiderable virtues of its table fare, is the Alouette, whose destinies are presided over by Laurent, widely and favorably known as the “Crêpes Suzette King” of the Pacific Coast. Alouette is in Polk Street at the former address of the Poodle Dog, a great name in the legend of San Francisco's bohemian restaurants of the days before the fire of 1906. This was not, of course, the original Poodle Dog which was presided over by Old Pierre and which sired another notable San Francisco restaurant of the turn of the century, the Pup, but so much a part of the heroic saga of California gastronomy has the name become that there will probably be a Poodle Dog somewhere in San Francisco as long as there are giant crabs, sand dabs, and pismo clams.
To return to Laurent's Alouette, it is probably the nearest thing now available to the old-time San Francisco French restaurant such as were the Louvre, Marchand's, Maison Dorée, Perini's, Tehama House, Palace of Art, and Nevada. The menu is liberal without being definitive, and the abalone meunière, coq au vin, and prawns Louis are superlative. The wine cellar, quite understandably, leans in the direction of California wines.
Laurent himself does the crêpes for dessert as he has done them by an estimated hundred thousand orders in former years for San Franciscans at the Palace and the Prado, employing all the nice touches and refinements which give this arrangement an artistry, as differentiated from mere pyrotechnic yokel bait. The premises themselves are, to our way of thinking, plainly lit and severely decorated as barely to escape the depressing, but obviously discreet and knowing citizens in reassuring numbers are present nightly, a testimonial to the sound cuisine of the house in the absence of any parade or ornamentation. An aged waiter in charge of wine service claims to have been a member of the staff of the original Poodle Dog, and this is the sole concession of the management to atmosphere.
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