by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with and concluding this post, featuring, from the Museum’s holdings, a Thanksgiving Day menu and musical program issued by the Del Monte Tavern of Los Angeles from this day in 1905, we pick up the story with the retirement of Jerry Illich, a prominent restaurateur of more than two decades, due to ill-health in 1900 and the assumption of his business, including the structure Illich built on 3rd Street between Spring and Broadway, by James M Kellerman.
Kellerman was an oil producer and obviously acquired the business and restaurant as an investment, so the eatery was leased to Robert Gordan, who may have known Kellerman because of his own short-lived business as an oil stock broker. Prior to that, it appears Gordan, a native of Germany, was a merchant tailor as someone by that name (“Gordan” being an unusual spelling) had a string of businesses on the West Coast during the Boom of the 1880s before the bust that followed led to his enterprise being attached due to debt.
As was the case with John Koster, who we introduced in part one and who also went through that process, however, Gordan pressed on with the tailoring business along with a brother, though bankruptcy followed in 1898. The following spring, however, he moved into the restaurant business, operating, for about a year, the Royal Bakery Restaurant on Spring Street, south of 1st, until he did a swap, turning the eatery over to a man from which he acquired an orchard near San Bernardino.
In 1900, as the region’s oil industry was in its own frenzied boom, Gordan joined a group to form the Royal Union Oil Company while opening his brokerage business. At the end of the year, however, he took over the former Illich restaurant and gave it the moniker of the Del Monte. During not quite 2 1/2 years under his operation, the eatery hosted banquets by all kinds of organizations, from attorneys’ groups to fraternal orders to business societies and generally seemed to stay out of trouble, though Gordan was once accused of filling wine bottles with inferior product and had a very brief waiters’ strike during his short tenure.
In March 1903, however, the Del Monte was taken over by Koster and John J. Lonergan, who was also briefly brought into the first post. The former rebounded from “Koster’s Crash” involving the late Eighties failure of his lavish restaurant in the Hollenbeck Block by taking advantage of his ties with the city’s political establishment (he was also a brother-in-law of David B. Henderson, who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1899-1903) to serve two separate terms, in the early and later 1890s, as a deputy city clerk. Koster then served as the head ticket agent at the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Arcade Depot for several years starting in 1897.
The first located advertisement for the newly minted partnership promoted the fact that the three floors of the building were utilized and that, along with lunches and dinners that offered “everything that is good in the way of the season’s delicacies,” there were also “nice music” and “right prices.” An image showed the entrance at 221 W. Third and a trio of fashionable ladies in the doorway—this clearly intended that the establishment was perfectly acceptable for women to patronize.
Another early ad touted the restaurant for those looking to enjoy a meal “After The Theater” and observing that “‘Tis the fad to dine after the Theater, and with the attractive appointments, inimitable service, and pleasing music, the Del Monte Tavern is just the place.” The idea, again, was to assure potential patrons that the eatery was of the highest quality and perfect for discriminating diners.
An early banquet mentioned as occurring at the Del Monte with Koster and Lonergan at the helm was for the Grocers’ Association of Southern California, which marked the end of its second annual convention with the feast, though nothing was said in the press coverage about the meal or the restaurant. In fact, this was typical of news accounts, including those for the Los Angeles Bar Association and Los Angeles Realty Board, two of the more prominent entities (comprised almost entirely of men in those days) that gathered at the restaurant, but with its business activities discussed rather than the Del Monte’s food or service.
One event that briefly discussed what took place in the eatery was a testimonial dinner on 19 October 1903 for Arthur Letts, the proprietor of the popular Broadway department store, who’d just returned to the Angel City after a lengthy vacation in Europe. Nearly thirty department managers threw the shindig for the merchant prince, who gave them a fine dinner before he left for his trip. The Los Angeles Express of the following day reported that,
Excellent taste was manifest in the decorations of the banquet room on the second floor and red carnations were strewed upon the tables, which were lighted with red-shaded candelabra. At each plate was a handsome menu bearing a likeness of Mr. Letts and a half-dozen photo illustrations of scenes visited by him on his continental trip. After each course was printed an appropriate quotation.
Tiny baskets filled with raisins and walnuts stood at each plate and “nuts to crack” was the last item on the menu. The walnuts contained quotations from “A Self-made Merchant’s Letters to His Son,” [presumably penned by Letts to his namesake son and successor, who sold the store three years after the founder’s 1923 death], and each guest read aloud the scraps of sage advice contained in the nuts in his basket.
It was not stated who was responsible for these unusual decorative touches, though it seems likely the Del Monte staff collaborated with Broadway department heads on it. Another interesting element to the event was that a stereopticon presentation of slides from Letts’ trip was given, as well.
By early 1904, the Del Monte adopted a motto of sorts in calling itself a “Swell Cafe,” offering “private dining and wining,” the latter offered through “‘Urn’ Wine,” which seems to have been a reference to the earliest known evidence of wine, when it was stored in these vessels in ancient times (in fact, this last summer, an astounding discovery was made of the oldest extant wine dating back some 2,000 years in Roman-controlled Spain) comprising the “best vintage in the state.”
Another interesting gathering at the Del Monte was in late May 1904 when the junior class gave a banquet to their senior betters from Occidental College. Not only was it mentioned that “the table was decorated in papyrus and white carnations” and the menu and list of toasts printed and placed in envelopes, but among the eight presentations by President Guy Wadsworth and male and female students was a poem, “When Shall We Three Meet Again?” by a senior who was graduating at just 18 years of age with Robinson Jeffers becoming one of the more notable California poets of his time.
In late 1904, Kellerman and Lonergan, with their past experience in the industry, along with Koster, were among the founders of the Carlsbad Consolidated Oil Company, which owned some 7,000 acres in New Mexico. It does not appear that there was any success with the enterprise, while Koster and Lonergan looked to expand their local efforts, including in fall 1905 with management of the Vendome Hotel in Ocean Park (South Santa Monica adjacent to Venice).
During the year in which his Thanksgiving program was made, there were several references to gatherings for banquets at the Del Monte, including one for city officials at the start of 1905 and at which prominent attorney Earl Rogers was the master of ceremonies or toastmaster, while, on either side of him, sat the outgoing mayor, Meredith P. Snyder, and his successor, Owen McAleer. It was added that, in a presumably peace transfer of power,
The utmost good feeling was manifested. Defeated and successful aspirants broke bread together and each endeavored to make things pleasant for the other. Everybody and everything except the press was toasted. The newspaper men were roasted, the officials jocularly asserting that the end of the year offered the only safe opportunity of getting even.
Other notable groups holding mirthful dinners at the eatery included the Realty Board, the California Independent Telephone Association, the state funeral directors’ association, and the Los Angele Credit Men’s group, which took a straw poll on a proposal to limit or ban saloons within city limits—the tally was 18 for keeping saloons open against 7 who supported restrictions. This was a timely issue, obviously, for restaurants like the Del Monte as moral arbiters in the Angel City were constantly on the watch for actions in establishments that would justify requesting the Police Commission (headed by the Mayor) to revoke licenses.
About a month before Thanksgiving, the Southern California Cooks’ Association held its annual exhibit and ball at Turner Hall, and a large table at the venue was set aside for “marvelous exhibits of the cook’s art. Seven judges were appointed to award prizes for these displays, including representatives of the Jonathan Club, Hotel Hollenbeck, the Westminster Hotel and Koster of the Del Monte.
Entries from the Jonathan, the California Club, the Hollenbeck Café, Martin’s Restaurant, the Westminster, the Hotel Lankershim, the Superior Restaurant, the Café Bristol and others were mentioned. Then, there was the contribution of Del Monte’s chef, Albert Acosta, of “a mammoth frog, illuminated with electric lights and facing what was termed a ‘frog’s paradise,” a mirror pool, surrounded by crisp, brown frog’s legs.”
There were also two descriptions (well, advertisements disguised as articles), the first found, of the restaurant from the Los Angeles Herald of 3 September and the Catholic newspaper, the Tidings of 22 December. The first proclaimed that “Los Angeles is a cosmopolitan city, and the Del Monte Tavern is a cosmopolitan place. It’s the cosmopolitan place of entertainment in this city,” while it was also claimed that, since the restaurant opened eight years earlier, it “became a part of the new order of things whereby Los Angeles has made fame the world over for unique and a higher order of things in business and in the entertainment of the people from all quarters of the world.”
Hearkening back to the organization of the structure Illich built a decade or so earlier, the piece continued that,
The Del Monte is a hotel, with one of the swellest cafe attachments to be found on the Pacific coast. This cafe is situated on the first floor, with private dining rooms on the second, and hotel accommodations [it was formerly a dance hall] on the third floor. The Del Monte Tavern is thoroughly furnished with everything modern . . . Messrs. Koster and Lonergan are among the most noted caterers in the west, who have especially designed that the Del Monte Tavern would become one of the most noted hostelries and places of resort in California, and such is the character of the house. [It is] [o]ne of the most agreeable places for a meal, a lodgment or a place of abode.
The emphasis on accommodations is particularly notable because no such references were found previously, but also because this would soon become a major problem for Koster and Lonergan, as a follow-up post in February will discuss.
With the Tidings description, it was stated that the establishment “has been located in our midst for the past three years” and it was averred that it was “one of the foremost” cafes in the Angel City “and has always occupied a position of prominence.” The proprietors were lionized for being “gentlemen who have had years of experience in their chosen line” and who employed forty persons “whose orders are strictly, courtesy and attention to the patrons.” The piece concluded, without any reference to the hotel aspect,
The main cafe is considered the swell thing of its kind, and in addition to the main dining room, private dining and banquet rooms are also to be had. The Del Monte Tavern is the home of good livers [they didn’t mean liver and onions on the menu], and many of our best people would go to no other place when they desire really good, first class treatment in this line.
Unfortunately, nothing was located specifically about the Thanksgiving dinner or about the musical offerings at the restaurant, though an ad from June in the Los Angeles Times made reference, in addition to the 75-cent “best table d-hoté dinner on the Pacific Coast” and the “best California wines,” noted that music was offered during dinner from 6 to 8 p.m. nightly.
Despite the promotion of the Del Monte as the choice of “many of our best people” and being “most agreeable” for food or lodging, trouble came abruptly and swiftly to the establishment within just a few months of the Thanksgiving dinner and very shortly after the favorable description in the religious paper.
For that, however, we are going to defer to 6 February and a post on what transpired that brought the Del Monte to a stark and sudden end. Be sure to join us then for that remarkable bit of our local restaurant history!