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Frankly Speaking cover photo by Fred Lyon. |
"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 |
Copyright 2001 Hank Donat |