F I R S TP R E V818NEXTLAST

Big Squid, Chinatown
Sometimes you see something that you have to photograph even if you don't have a story to tell. This freakishly huge (compare it to the chicken), bright orange squid was just begging to be on FogBay. I was going to try and tie it somehow to the 1955 film, It Came from Beneath the Sea, about a giant octopus that attacks San Francisco but that's kinda lame. So instead I'm going to tell the story of another Chinese delicacy. This dish was created in 1878 during a banquet to honor Li Hung-Chang, the first Chinese viceroy to visit San Francisco. At the lavish banquet full of rich foods the viceroy found that he was not feeling so well and asked the chef for a simple dish of vegetables and meat. The chef created a new type of Chinese potpourri for the viceroy and served what is now known as chop suey, another San Francisco first.
[ MAP F-15 ]