Description
Contains menus, wine labels, and postcards of the Poodle Dog, Old Poodle Dog and Bergez-Frank's Old Poodle Dog restaurants.
Background
ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY: Frenchman François Péguillan opened Le Poulet d'Or at the corner of Washington and Dupont Streets
in 1849, catering to miners. It came to be known as the Poodle Dog. In 1868, it moved to the corner of Bush and Dupont streets
and the name was officially changed to Old Poodle Dog Restaurant. In the 1890s, owner A. Blanco and his partner Brun built
a six-story building at the corner of Eddy and Mason streets, designed by architects William Mooser & Son. The new restaurant
was one of San Francisco's celebrated French restaurants, catering to bankers and lawyers, politicians and judges, with an
18-chef staff and wine cellars stocked with over 10,000 bottles of wine from around the world. Destroyed in the earthquake
and fire of 1906, the restaurant was re-opened in mid-1906 by Jean Baptiste Pon and chef Calixte Lalanne, first in temporary
quarters on Van Ness Avenue, then to a residential building on Eddy Street. In 1908, Lalanne and Pon joined with Camille Mailhebuau
and Louis Coutard of Frank's Rotisserie, and Jean Bergez of the Bergez Restaurant. The new incarnation was known as Bergez-Frank's
Old Poodle Dog, now at the corner of Claude Lane. Prohibition came about in 1919, and the restaurant was closed in 1922. Mailhebuau
opened Camille's Rotisserie and Restaurant the following year. In subsequent years the Poodle Dog name was revived by descandents
of its former owners at several San Francisco locations.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION OF ROBERT W. BROWER: Robert W. Brower is a San Francisco Bay Area trial lawyer of 40 years. He is
also a competition cook and independent culinary historian with a focus on Italian American cookbooks. Brower is a contributing
author of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, c2013. His Poodle Dog collection began in the antiquarian
section of Moe's Bookstore in Berkeley, where he bought his first two menus. One of them was the menu for a dinner honoring
a Mr. Hale, as he prepared to leave for military service during World War I. Brower researched the names of the dinner guests,
who had autographed the menu, and his collection was hatched.