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Mini Series, St Francis Hotel, Day 2 of 3
Food has played an important part in the the history of the St. Francis. Shown above is one of its restaurants, the famous Oak Room. In the 1910s the hotel featured San Francisco's first celebrity chef, the legendary Victor Hirtzler. Before coming to the St. Francis the French-trained Hirtzler had created a pheasant and truffle mousse dish for King Carlos I of Portugal. The dish was so expensive, and the King ate it so often, that the recipe was blamed in part for the bankruptcy of the nation and the assassination of the King. In San Francisco Hirtzler was famous for another signature recipe, Celery Victor and for preparing eggs in over 200 ways including Eggs Moscow, stuffed with caviar.
In 1916 Hirtzler once again changed the political course of a nation. During an election night banquet for Republican Presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes, the hotel's culinary workers union went on strike. Hirtzler crossed the picket line and served the meal himself. The outraged workers distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing Hughes as anti-union. The next morning the election-favorite Hughes awoke to find that he had lost California by just 3,600 votes, a margin of defeat that was less than the turnout of union voters in San Francisco. By losing California Hughes lost the national election and the presidency to Woodrow Wilson.
While Hughes never recovered, Hirtzler and the St. Francis carried on just fine. For decades the hotel's Monday lunch in the Mural Room was the center of the city's social life, with carriages lined up around the block to deliver San Francisco's power brokers to the St. Francis while Swiss maitre d' Ernest Gloor seated the socialites in hierarchical order.
The hotel still prides itself on its food whether it's famously providing Oreo cookies to Richard Nixon at midnight or designing meals for Ethel Barrymore's pet monkey. Today the St. Francis features the restaurant, Micheal Mina, thought by many to be the finest restaurant in a city filled with fine restaurants.
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