by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the Thanksgiving holiday tomorrow and most of us eating and drinking our fill while, in many cases, also watching pro football, this “Food for Thought” post takes us back almost 120 years courtesy of a 1905 program from the Homestead’s collection providing the menu and musical program for a holiday repast at the Del Monte Tavern in downtown Los Angeles.
The item has a beautiful raised vignette on the front cover of purple flowers and gold stems within and below which is the name and address of the establishment, this being 219 and 221 West Third Street the event name of “Thanksgiving Dinner” and the date, 30 November 1905. The structure, built in 1896, is no longer with us and it is hardly a surprise that the site, across from the famous Bradbury Building, is now a parking lot.
The menu is a remarkable one with its multi-course offerings, all for a dollar, with oyster cocktail, celery, olives and radishes as hors d’oeuvres; followed by two soups; then fried sole with tartar sauce and potato croquettes; then the entrée of Filet Mignon aux Champignons, as well as “Chicken Enchilades [sic] con Frijole[s]”, along with banana fritters, Benedictine sauce and Oyster Patties a la Poulette; roasted meat including pork with sweet potatoes, prime rib au jus and, naturally, turkey with chestnut dressing and cranberry sauce, while the sides were mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, green peas and stewed tomatoes; a Lobster Mayonnaise salad; and desserts including an English plum pudding with brand sauce, mince pie, lemon meringue pie, “Ice Cream Napolitane,” assorted cakes, cheese and crackers, fruit, nuts and raisins and coffee and frozen egg nogg. The word Zinfandel appears to the side, suggestive that this was wine of the evening.
As for the “Thanksgiving Concert.” it lasted from 6 to 8 p.m. and consisted of eight pieces, including a march by Rudolph Aronson called “Our President” and dedicated to Chief Executive Theodore Roosevelt; a waltz; a selection from the comic opera, “The Two Roses;” an intermezzo called “Araby;” a medley, “1863; “Bits of Remick’s Hits” by Bodewalt Lampe; a waltz called “In My Merry Oldsmobile;” a tune called “Forgotten;” and the concluding march, John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The name of Musical Director Professor Max C. Elsberger is also given.
The program bespeaks fine food, good music along with its elegant design, though there is a side to the Del Monte Tavern’s history, especially within just a few months of the Thanksgiving feast, that belies the impression the publication provides. We’ll actually delve into the sordid details of what transpired in February 1906 for a post this coming February, but have plenty of time and space here to go into some of the early history of the Del Monte and its predecessor, so let’s press on with this modest contribution to early Los Angeles restaurant history.
Jerry Illich, a native of Montenegro (Dalmatia was often used to describe his homeland) in the Balkan region of Europe, then part of the declining Austrian Empire, was at sea from ages 13 to 20 and left a ship at San Francisco. He then migrated in the late 1870s to Los Angeles and opened a “chop shop” near the Plaza. Over close to two decades, he built his restaurant, moved to the west side of Main Street north of 1st, into a success and it was known as a gathering place for political and social elites in the Angel City, not to mention its famous oysters.
After buying the property on 3rd Street in 1895, he set about constructing a three-story brick building to house his popular establishment and it opened just before Thanksgiving the following year. The Los Angeles Herald of 17 November 1895 proclaimed that,
In the new Illich building . . . the city of Los Angeles will realize an important acquisition to its restaurant and amusement facilities which has long been wanting. It will supply that class of resort which every American or European city of any importance already has. It will constitute a place for the giving of private dancing and dinner parties, or both, where all the undisturbed enjoyment may be had by guests that could be realized at home. It will open one of the finest cafes that this city or state possesses and will furnish at all times a thoroughly high-toned restaurant and oyster parlor for the use of ladies and gentlemen.
The structure’s style was denoted as Italian Renaissance and was 43′ wide and 92′ deep with a full basement, where a barbershop and bathrooms were located. The main dining room boasted frescoes in oil on the walls and lighting that “render the place a veritable dream of color and design,” while there were also rooms for women and men to dine separately. These, too, were ornately furnished and decorated so that the paper asserted that “the furnishings of the building throughout are as fine as money can buy or good taste select.” An aquarium at the front added special interest.
An abundant use of filigreed iron, marble, wood paneling and fine glass were also highlighted and the front constructed of “cement brick with iron trimmings.” The second level constituted a banquet hall of 21 by 51 feet “with five other apartments of liberal size, all connected by means of folding doors,” so that it was possible to have one single space nearly 100 feet long for events of up to 200 persons, with half that number accommodated in the banquet hall and five smaller spaces. A lobby at the top of the stairs featured a window of art glass emitting an attractive amount of light, while sideboards in the five spaces and toilet room were also located at this level.
The third floor comprised a dance hall essentially the length and width of the structure, aside from space dedicated for cloak and dressing rooms and an attendants’ space and was well-lighted and ventilated for the comfort of guests, while the floors were brightly polished “and every arrangement provided to realize the highest artistic effect.” Oregon pine, fine draperies, French plate glass and those oil frescoes were mentioned as crucial to this décor. A side carriage drive, shown in an accompanying drawing, allowed for easy loading and unloading of guests and a wide end to the alley permitted turning around of vehicles and entrances were canopied for weather protection.
Illich was praised for what was deemed “an ornament to the city” and for fulfilling a felt need for such a fine dining establishment.” Moreover, the Herald added that “the well known standing of Mr. Illich insures that the place will be maintained at all times upon the highest moral plane and that ladies unattended may come to it at all reasonable hours.” Given the later history of the operations there, this is particularly notable.
The proprietor, however, suffered from the kidney disease, nephritis, and, in June 1900, sold his restaurant and building to James M. Kellerman and lived just two more years before succumbing to his illness at age 52. Kellerman did not come from a restaurant background, as the Pennsylvania native, not surprisingly, was an oil driller and prospector. Born in 1860, he appears to have come to greater Los Angeles a few years after Illich and spent much of his early career in the San Fernando oil fields in modern Santa Clarita, specifically Newhall. In 1896, he and a partner acquired the saloon license at 223 W. Third, in the Illich Building, from the estate of its late operator, August Steinike (whose widow, Frances Davoust, was the sister of Anita, the wife of the Homestead’s then-owner, John Harrison Temple).
Having already been operating the saloon, it was natural for Kellerman to acquire the entire establishment and structure. The purchase price for the Illich establishment was $75,000 and there was a producing well at Newhall by a firm he co-owned called Nettleton and Kellerman. It was launched earlier in 1900 and an oil boom in the region was on, so he was part of three other companies formed that year. Perhaps he had some arranged financing, but Kellerman, within a few months, embarked on an addition in the rear of the structure to cost another $5,500.
Kellerman’s business activity accelerated through the first decade of the 20th century, when the third major development boom in greater Los Angeles took place and he was involved in more oil drilling at Brea Canyon in Orange County for Union Oil Company, mining, a realty and improvement company in South Pasadena where he resided, an ice and cold storage business, and mothers.
It was perhaps through the mining and oil work that Kellerman did that he became acquainted with John J. Lonergan, though the latter was also a Pennsylvania native, being born in that state in 1857. Lonergan lived in Santa Barbara before migrating to Los Angeles about 1893 and was a mining engineer who also was assayer and refiner of products from mines. He was involved in a couple of partnerships, as well as working solo, while also a co-owner of a few oil and mining companies during the Nineties and into the first years of the new century. An effort to diversify included an ill-fated attempt to operate the Hotel Broadway, on that thoroughfare near 4th Street.
A third Pennsylvania native to enter the picture here was John Koster (1853-1935), who was from Erie, where he worked as a store clerk, and settled in Los Angeles in 1881, joining his father-in-law Henry B. Fox (who moved to the Angel City in 1876 and opened a money brokerage business) in the operation of a dry goods store. After about a year, he purchased the Spring Street Bakery and looks to have done rather well with the enterprise.
When the Boom of the Eighties ensued, starting in 1886 (with William H. Workman as mayor of the Angel City,) Koster got into the risky world of speculation, easy enough to do in the feverish ferment of these hyper-realized environments. One major project was the Gladstone townsite, one of dozens of such real estate projects throughout the region as developers tried to make hay while the sun shone. This effort, occurring near Azusa in the northeastern portion of the San Gabriel Valley was promoted with all the gusto and propaganda that was typical of the era, but it ended up, as most such enterprises did, in financial failure.
So, too, did Koster’s establishment early in 1888 of a restaurant that had the Los Angeles Express of 24 February claiming that,
What the famous “Delmonico” is to the fashionable eating public of New York, and the elegant Lick House or Palace Hotel dining rooms to San Francisco, Koster’s new Cafe and Lunch Rooms will be to the people of Los Angeles. A great need . . . has been felt for some time past, and it has remained for . . . Mr. John Koster, to open, not only the largest establishment of its kind in the city, but the most elegant in its furnishings, most convenient in its appointments and altogether the most complete and elaborate cafe and lunch parlors, bakery and confectionery to be found anywhere west of the Mississippi river—out-rivaling everything of its kind for elegance, taste and beauty even in San Francisco.
How much of this boom-fueled media hype and promotion and how much Koster’s ambition is hard to know, but the Express added that, after he purchased the bakery, with its confectionery component, he “later opened the elegant ice cream, oyster and lunch parlors in the Hollenbeck block,” built at the southwest corner of Spring and 2nd streets by John E. and Elizabeth Hollenbeck, wealthy capitalists residing in Boyle Heights (founded by Mayor Workman), and which included their namesake hotel, “which have become so popular.”
The paper went on that Koster had long been contemplating this “mammoth enterprise” and invested $40,000 for the 12,690 square-foot space that included a 200-person capacity dining room of nearly 4,600 square feet and divisible into three smaller spaces, along with the kitchen, pantry and a basement of just north of 6,200 square feet for the bakery and confectionery, as well as a laundry and storage. Also mentioned was the wide interior stairway from the hotel; Koster’s office designed in “elegance and grandeur;” the parlors for men and women; a cigar stand; and more.
Noting the use of mica and pacrusta (a paper pulp applied to walls), as well as flooring almost exclusively of tile costing $5,000, the Express pronounced that “the interior decorations display marked skill, admirable taste and rare ability.” With nearly fifty employees, “the grand opening was attended yesterday by thousands of people, who expressed themselves as more than pleased, and showered ‘volumes’ of congratulations on the fortunate and envied Mr. Koster.”
As it turned out, his fortunes were not as successful as anticipated and no one would envy the fact that, in under four months, the restaurateur went into assignment in what was termed “Koster’s Crash.” The Los Angeles Times of 10 June reported that “there was quite a stir on the streets” when the news got out about the Gladstone and café debacles, as well as another failed venture with a marble company, though “it was not believed that he was seriously crippled.” This was especially thought to be the case because “when he opened his new [restaurant], which is one of the finest on the coast, it was the general impression that he was in a good fix, financially.”
Interviewed at the café, Koster blamed his misfortune on “his failure to attract outside speculation,” or investment, as well as his aim to open a place “which would be a credit to any city.” He insisted that his creditors were supportive and he would continue operating the eatery, but also noted that “he had seen it was impossible to keep up the prices at which he had started out, and had reduced them,” but the reputation for expensive meals lingered. Koster further averred that the café was operating on a paying basis and, with the proper patronage “to which he is entitled he will come out all right.”
What was not mentioned, however, was that the boom was well on its way to going bust and the situation simply was not going to get better.
Consequently, while the restaurant remain open for a while longer, by early 1890, he petitioned for voluntary insolvency, citing personal debts of about $11,000 but assets of just $557.45. He was able, however, to get back on his feet to a certain extent, including a return to the restaurant business, but we’ll save that for part two, so be on the lookout for that soon.
Meantime, we wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, including filling up with fine food, whether home-cooked or from a restaurant!
As highlighted in this post, a Thanksgiving dinner at Del Monte Tavern in Los Angeles cost just $1 in 1905, while half a dozen oysters were only $0.25. Adjusted for inflation, these prices equate to approximately $36 and $9 today, which are about half the currently actual market prices. In 1905, the average worker’s monthly salary was $125, allowing them to afford 125 Thanksgiving dinners. By comparison, with today’s average monthly salary of $5,000, modern individuals can afford fewer than 83 Thanksgiving meals – a decrease in affordability of over 40%.
I know variable factors contribute to this change, but I believe the major influences are the rising costs of food and labor. Today’s meals not only often feature more elaborate and expensive ingredients, pushing prices higher, but even those basic staples like beef and pork have also seen supply constraints , increasing costs dramatically after pandemic. An evidently recent example is that most supermarkets no longer offer hams on sale for Thanksgiving.
Labor costs have also risen significantly, driven by successful labor rights movements that have increased wages over and over, even though productivity levels have remained relatively stable. Additionally, consumer spending patterns have shifted greatly. Besides chunk budgets were spent mandatory expenses of housing and healthcare, voluntary spending have directed much resources toward electronics.
Affordability have consequently decreased, especially for dinning out during special occasions like Thanksgiving.