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 20 Cosmo Place |
"I knew a great
number of my customers in Oakland were from San Francisco and when I felt
enough people were interested in a Trader Vic's across the bay, we
started to look for a location. Drove up one street and down the next. Finally,
I found a parking lot with a garage on it on Cosmo Alley. I looked up the
owner and he was willing to lease." That's how it started according to "Frankly
Speaking," the autobiography of the late Trader Vic himself, Victor
Bergeron. In 1951, when Trader Vic opened his restaurant on this alley street
in the Tenderloin, he founded what became the hub of sophisticated night
life in the City, a club atmosphere often compared to New York's "21." In
addition, the eccentric traveler and restaurateur invented the Mai Tai,
mainstreamed Polynesian food in the U.S., and built an international restaurant
empire that continues to operate today under Bergeron heirs. The San Francisco
location, now the popular Le Colonial Vietnamese restaurant, closed in the
early 1990s, but not before carving out an important place in history not
only for San Franciscans, but for Britons as well. During her 1983 visit
to America, Queen Detail
I: Trader Vic's Redux |
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Copyright 2001 Hank Donat |