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 Queen Elizabeth II's yacht Britannia arrives in San Francisco Bay. More |
"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 |