The Elite Cafe: aging gracefully

Posted on July 11, 2011 by editors

WHILE 30 YEARS can be more than a lifetime in San Francisco’s ever-changing restaurant world, Fillmore’s venerable Elite Cafe on July 14 will celebrate three decades of serving up New Orleans cuisine in its historic Art Deco home.

And that’s only its third incarnation.

The woody, warm and welcoming spot at 2049 Fillmore is rich in history. It was built in 1932 as a home for the Lincoln Grill, which opened across the street in 1928. Later it was transformed into The Asia Cafe, a chop suey house known to locals as a front for a gambling joint. Dozens of telephone lines were said to run into the basement.

It was also cheap.

“I remember getting a four-course meal — soup, salad and a meat dish with potato and vegetable, finished off with coffee and a dish of ice cream — all for a total cost of 85 cents,” recalls local resident Joe Beyer of his arrival in the neighborhood in the 1950s.

Times have changed, and so has Fillmore Street.

In 1981, Tom Clendening and Sam Duvall — a serial restaurateur who now owns Izzy’s Chop House in the Marina, renovated the space and opened it as The Elite Cafe. The neon sign that had hung out front for decades proclaiming The Asia Cafe was revised and rewired to announce The Elite Cafe. An enduring image is the raw bar with oysters and clams on ice beckoning to passersby in the front window.

The Elite was one of three businesses that opened in 1981, heralding the renaissance of Fillmore Street as a major shopping and dining destination. The others were Fillamento, the home design emporium that closed in 2001, and Vivande, Carlo Middione’s Italian restaurant, which closed last year.

Peter Snyderman took over as managing partner in 2005, doing away with the beckoning bivalves in the front window, but restoring the original mahogany details and adding outdoor seating. Chef about town Joanna Karlinsky revamped the menu, bringing along her signature Meetinghouse biscuits, which were born just up the block, and which remain on the menu still.

 

 

EARLIER: “There’s a reason they call it the Elite“

Filed under: Food, Drink & Lodging, Landmarks, Locals, Neighborhood History | Leave a Comment »

Growing up along Fillmore

Posted on July 5, 2011 by editors

The end of the cable car line was at Fillmore and Washington.

FIRST PERSON | Charlie Greene

The corner of Jackson and Fillmore was the center of the universe when I was growing up at 2449 Jackson Street in the 1950s and 60s. You could get anywhere in the city on four Muni bus lines — the 22-Fillmore, 80-Leavenworth, 3-Jackson and 24-Divisadero — plus the Washington-Jackson cable car.

The 22-Fillmore — the Double Deuce — was my favorite. It could take you north to the Marina or south through the Fillmore, the Mission and all the way to Potrero Hill. I used to ride my skateboard on Fillmore, holding on to the round wire holders on the back of the bus to get a running start. I will never forget the chug-a-chug sound the 3 and 22 made going up and down the hills of San Francisco.

The cable cars were really loud, but it was cool when they rang the bell letting everyone know they were taking off. My older sister would get dressed up with white gloves and patent leather shoes and ride the cable car with my mom to go shopping downtown at the City of Paris, I. Magnin’s and Blum’s. I was jealous she got to have the coffee crunch cake at Blum’s. It was the best.

The end of the cable car line was at Washington and Fillmore, also home to Joe’s Smoke Shop, which had great greasy burgers and Nehi orange sodas. There was a barber shop next door. Across the street was the Unique Market, where my mom had a charge account I used for soda, chips, candy — anything a kid could want.
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Old friends, new faces at JazzFest

Posted on June 30, 2011 by editors

For the 27th time, Fillmore Street will celebrate the Fourth of July by hosting the Fillmore Jazz Festival, this year on July 2 and 3. It’s by far the largest street party in the city, stretching from Jackson Street in Pacific Heights south through the Fillmore Jazz District to Eddy Street. Ruth Dewson, the long-reigning Mayor of Fillmore Street, remembers how the festival got its start.

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Before Paris, the Steins were locals

Posted on June 2, 2011 by editors

The rental flats at Washington & Lyon Streets helped fund the Steins' art collection.

A rt patrons Michael and Sarah Stein lived in the Fillmore, then primarily a Jewish neighborhood, before they joined his sister Gertrude and brother Leo in Paris in the early 1900s. So did Gertrude Stein’s longtime companion, Alice B. Toklas.

The Stein family owned and operated some of San Francisco’s many cable car lines, which Michael consolidated and sold. He also built the first rental flats in the city at the corner of Washington and Lyon Streets. It was the income from these investments that enabled the family to collect art and live abroad for many decades. Together they created a legendary collection of modern art and helped establish Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso as two of the most important artists of the 20th century.

The Stein collection has since been dispersed to museums around the world. But it is reunited in “The Steins Collect,” an exhibition now on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which highlights their local connections.

Read more: “From Pierce Street to Paris”

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Dental school moving downtown

Posted on June 1, 2011 by editors

For more than 40 years, the School of Dentistry of the University of the Pacific has called the neighborhood home, providing no-cost and low-cost dental care through its clinics and enlivening the area with more than 1,100 students, faculty and staff. But that may soon change.

School officials have signed an agreement to leave their longtime home at 2155 Webster Street and buy a new building downtown at 155 Fifth Street. The 350,000-square-foot building, behind the Intercontinental Hotel at Fifth and Howard Streets, formerly housed offices for Wells Fargo Bank.

The dean of the dental school, Patrick J. Ferrillo Jr., announced last year that the school was exploring how to expand and update its facilities. The three options: renovate the existing building, expand into the adjacent parking lot on Sacramento Street or move to another part of town.

The school is expected to put its current home up for sale. An obvious buyer is California Pacific Medical Center, located just across the street. But hospital officials recently unveiled plans to renovate their facilities that do not include the dental school building.

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Facebook revolt at Sacred Heart

Posted on June 1, 2011 by editors

Schools of the Sacred Heart are in the Flood Mansions on Broadway.

DISPATCH | Elizabeth Moore

Last year the New Fillmore reported on the reversal of the decision to close Stuart Hall High School in San Francisco in the July 2010 article, “Elite private school will live on.” Just short of a year later, there is another tremendous example of the same community coming together, this time to celebrate a Schools of the Sacred Heart educator, who after 38 years of service to the community has had her contract terminated, apparently without cause. Like last year’s decision regarding the closing of Stuart Hall, this decision was made without input from the community, and it has attracted a similar outcry.

At the same time that young people are using social media to instigate social movements in the Middle East, young people at 2222 Broadway (and beyond) are using social media to instigate a social movement at home. This is a story about a little school with a big, big heart.
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Filed under: Landmarks, Locals | 1 Comment »

A view worth suing for

Posted on May 12, 2011 by editors

On Billionaires Row, the stretch of Broadway that runs along the top of Pacific Heights, Larry Ellison is suing his millionaire downhill neighbors Jane and Bernard von Bothmer over some runaway redwoods and an acacia that block Ellison’s views of the bay. According to the complaint, the dispute has been going on since 2008. The lawsuit accuses the von Bothmers of less-than-enthusiastic pruning, loss of enjoyment, loss of value and loss of sunlight, according to CurbedSF. Read more

UPDATE: Crisis averted. Days before the trial was to begin, the two sides settled, with the von Bothmers agreeing to make substantial cuts to their trees. Read more

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Alta Plaza birds take flight

Posted on May 1, 2011 by editors

Bay Area Bird Encounters is Walter Kitundu's new interactive art piece at SFO.

Travelers through the swank new terminal two at San Francisco International Airport will find friends from the neighborhood to bid them hail and farewell. Birds from Alta Plaza Park are part of an ingenious new piece of interactive musical art created by longtime neighborhood resident Walter Kitundu for a children’s play area.

It’s intended for children of all ages.

“If you don’t feel like playing the benches, you can always sit on them,” says Kitundu of the two wing-shaped wooden seats that are also xylophones tuned to play the song of the golden-crowned sparrow.

The benches are part of a project he calls Bay Area Bird Encounters. They sit in front of a 28-foot-long mural of birds Kitundu photographed, then printed on sheets of veneered plywood and hand-carved into a wooden mosaic of 147 separate pieces. There’s a third sparrow in the mural, also a xylophone.
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‘A great player who loves what he’s doing’

Posted on May 1, 2011 by editors

Charles Unger plays on Sunday nights at Rasselas.

MUSIC | Anthony Torres

I first heard Charles Unger play when I stepped into the Sheba Piano Lounge on the way home from Yoshi’s one night. As I walked in, I was immediately struck by the intonation of the tenor sax and the ease with which Unger and his band, The Experience, moved through Carlos Santana’s “Europa.” Since then I have seen them at both Sheba and Rasselas. Every time, it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

With jazz, they say it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. These guys swing, and they do it in a way that incorporates a range of influences. The music moves and is inflected with a Latin groove and a Middle East undercurrent that creates a melancholy feel so sensuous a person can’t help but be moved.

Unger is a great player. He’s also a great guy who loves what he’s doing and does it with all the seriousness in the world. Music for him is a spiritual mission and a quest for a kind of secular redemption that he has pursued since he was a child — one that sustains him and has brought him a wealth of knowledge and experience.
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Thriving in the neighborhood

Posted on March 13, 2011 by editors

ORNITHOLOGY | Monte Travis

When I saw a golden crowned hummingbird up at Alta Plaza Park near the tennis courts, I was confused. I was unaware of any species that sports a golden crown. But then I watched as she dipped her bill into the long red tubular-shaped flowers adorning the bushes and witnessed the way the stamen pressed down on her head as she sipped nectar from the bottom of the flower. That was pollen on her head! It would travel with her to another flower, completing the plant’s sex act. I waited till she landed and took the shot above.

She’s actually a female Anna’s Hummingbird, the species that stays in San Francisco all year. Below is a male Anna’s I photographed at Lafayette Park last April. Note the vermillion, iridescent head. These little guys are amazing creatures, on so many levels, and they thrive right here in the neighborhood.

Filed under: Home & Garden, Locals | Leave a Comment »

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