by Zac Salem
We are happy to follow up the three-part post on early Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles from 1875 to 1900 with this one from Zac Salem, a prior contributor to The Homestead Blog, looking at an establishment in San Francisco from about the same period. Our hope is that the pair of posts will provide instructive and interesting contributions to the history of Mexican eateries in California at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries and thank Zac for his efforts, which inspired the Los Angeles post through taking some existing research and adding to it. We hope you enjoy his essay!
“Did you ever hear of Luna’s restaurant? By Jove, it’s just the place! It’s the restaurant where you get Mexican dinners; right in the heart of the Latin quarter; a quiet little old-fashioned place below the level of the street, respectable as a tomb.”
—From the novel “Blix”, by Frank Norris, 1899.
Of course, people of San Francisco today know the wide range of Mexican food available in the many fine restaurants and ubiquitous food trucks that serve everything from Yucatecan cochinita pibil to Oaxacan grasshoppers, down to burritos, birria, and churros. There are entire television series devoted to regional Mexican cuisine and how to prepare it at home, and the cookbooks are legion. Mexican food and its deep culture, high and low, are a part of most people’s culinary conscience, and mezcal and tequila are now treated on a par with some of the most overpriced bottled spirits on the market. If a Mexican restaurant in the city today does not serve hand-made tortillas or offer gluten-free pan dulce, it is not keeping up. Today there are possibly a thousand businesses that advertise as purveyors of Mexican food throughout the state of California, and several dozen Mexican restaurants in San Francisco alone.
This was not at all the culinary panorama of San Francisco in the year 1899. What were commonly known then as Mexican style eateries were chiefly “Tamale Parlors”, or “Tamale Grottos”, which were popular well into the twentieth century. These were often low cost, fast turnover take-out restaurants, and featured tamales wrapped in corn husks to be eaten on premises or taken out, the shucks summarily discarded willy-nilly. These were not necessarily Mexican-owned businesses. Many were located in the seedier parts of town, adjacent to shooting galleries, boardwalks and red-light districts, and, judging by the literature of the day, often had a rather low or tawdry reputation. Outside of ambulatory street vendors, authentic Mexican food was to be had, surely, if one were to search it out, but likely only in the “Mexican Quarter”, an area surrounding the Saint Francis’ church in today’s North Beach neighborhood. Several Mexican restaurants were advertised in this area as early as 1881, including the “Flor De Un Dia” at 1004 Kearny owned by Brigida Ortiz, another owned by Toribia Magallán at No. 5 Pinkney Place, as well as the “La Sorpresa” tienda and restaurant at 1236 Dupont Street at the corner of Vallejo, soon to be known as “Luna’s”.
This last mentioned eatery was to become famous, and indeed may have been one of the earliest attempts in San Francisco (and perhaps California?) to offer the general public outside of the Mexican Quarter a taste of authentic Mexican Cuisine in its higher, more elaborate forms, at a formal “Mexican Restaurant”, complete with white tablecloths, lace curtains, and all. The “La Sorpresa”, soon to be renamed after its owner Romulo Luna as “Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant”, had its beginnings at the aforementioned Dupont St. location, (now Grant Ave.), at the corner of Vallejo St. directly across the street from today’s “Cafe Trieste” of local renown. It existed from 1880 up to the time of the 1906 earthquake and fire. The restaurant / tienda began at this location in the heart of the “Mexican Quarter”, advertising both food and Mexican curios, but later moved to 529 California Street downtown.
I first became aware of its existence through Frank Norris’ delightful 1899 novel “Blix”. Though the restaurant is the setting of a complete chapter in the book, and a detailed description is given of the interior, the address and location of the eatery is left purposefully vague, in keeping with Norris’ vision of San Francisco as an enchanting Bohemia, mysterious and full of story-telling potential:
Luna’s Mexican restaurant has no address. It is on no particular street, at no particular corner; even its habitués, its most enthusiastic devotees, are unable to locate it upon demand. ‘It is over there in the quarter’, ‘not far from the cathedral there’. One could find it if one started out with that intent; but to direct another there—no, that is out of the question. It can be reached by following the alleys of Chinatown. You will come out of the last alley—the one where the slave girls are—upon the edge of the Mexican quarter, and by going straight forward a block or two, and by keeping a sharp lookout to right and left, you will hit upon it. It is always to be searched for, always to be discovered.
“Slave girls”?…….more on this in a moment.
That intriguing but opaque description of “Luna’s Restaurant” led me to the erroneous assumption that the restaurant was fictional, or perhaps a composite of several different places familiar to the author in his rambles about town. This remained my opinion until I recently discovered this lone advertisement from a January 18, 1904 San Francisco Columbia Theater Program:
Since knowledge of any pre-earthquake San Francisco businesses is spotty (the Hall Of Public Records having been destroyed in 1906), and the fact that many restaurants ceased to exist entirely after the holocaust , this lone scrap of evidence showing that Luna’s was a real restaurant, located in “the Mexican quarter” and a going business as late as 1904, intrigued me and proved grounds for further research. The address given on Dupont Street was in North Beach, known in Norris’ day as the “Latin Quarter”. A portion of this area , known as “The Mexican Quarter”, or “Little Mexico”, was roughly the area between Broadway, Dupont (now Grant), Vallejo, and to the east, Kearney Street. In the late 1800s, alongside the Italian and Portuguese colonies, the North Beach neighborhood was the center of the Mexican population of San Francisco, and there were Spanish language theaters, groceries, bookstores (“La Moderna Poesia” run by the Sánchez Family), and Our Lady Of Guadalupe Church at 906 Broadway in the immediate area. The restaurant’s location was on the fringe of the infamous “Barbary Coast” district, and the streets around the back of Luna’s on Dupont, (Hinkley and Pinckney alleys), contained the County Jail and a notorious (even for the time) red light district.
The fascinating advertisement touting Luna’s as “The most interesting restaurant for tourists in San Francisco” gives the impression that a novel, perhaps exotic, cultural and culinary experience was to be had there. While Norris only identifies one of the waiters as “Richard, or Ricardo, according to taste”, the interior is well described, with its “one mirror, six tables, and astonishing curtains of Nottingham lace”. A several course ‘supper Mexican” meal is described, starting with frijoles, then fish, and ending with mezcal, and coffee with kirsch. Mexican food is clearly elevated here to the level of cuisine, and the restaurant shown as a destination for lovers of culinary exotica; something above the commonplace. Special, atmospheric. “A Genuine First Class Mexican Dinner” reads the advertisement.
A letter written by poet Joaquin Miller to May Foster Carey, sometime before 1906, (as reported in the San Francisco Examiner of June 24, 1923) contains the following: “ I have dined with Queen Victoria, President Roosevelt, and Mrs. Carey……but where and when do we dine again, my own pretty May, Luna’s Mexican? Red peppers, red wine, red kisses, or pure white kisses like my May?”
Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant began at the 1236 Dupont Street address in 1880. It appears then in city directories and advertisements as “‘La Sorpresa’ Tienda Y Restaurant Mexicano”, and probably began simply as a neighborhood Mexican grocery and produce market, with a few tables at the back for locals to have a meal reminiscent of their home country. The name was soon changed to “Luna’s”. The 1892 Langley City Directory lists Romulo Luna as proprietor: Groceries and Mexican curios, 1236 Dupont. In 1896, Isabelle Santos is listed as cook in the restaurant. Both the grocery and restaurant apparently prospered, as the owner of the establishment, Luna, was included in an 1892 “who’s-who” (“The Bay Of San Francisco”, vol. 2, pages 421-422, Lewis Publishing Co). It gives the following information:
Romulo Luna, a commission merchant at 1236 Dupont St, San Francisco, established his business in 1878. The house does a general commission business, buying, selling, and shipping the produce of the coast. Mr. Luna was born February 17, 1847 in the city of Antlan, Mexico. The fifth of six children born to Rafaid and Refujio (Gomez) Luna, natives of Mexico. He was educated in Guadalajara and completed the course at Saint Mary’s college, San Francisco 1876. He learned book-binding in Mexico and followed that trade in San Francisco from 1876 to 1878, at which time he embarked in the commission business. In addition to this he conducts a restaurant near his commission house, and is also the owner of city lots in Oakland, and gold mining property in Tuolumne Hill which is now being developed. Mr. Luna was married at San Francisco, December 25, 1888 to miss Felicitas Gonzalez, a native of Mexico and they have four children living: Miguel, Romulo, Carlos, and Rodolfo. Two of their children are deceased: —Carlos, who died in 1889, and Enrique in 1888. Mr. Luna is a member of no secret order, but is associated with the Spanish Benevolent Society of San Francisco; also the Chilean Society.
The proprietor at this date, “J. Gonzalez” is likely a relative of Romulo’s wife Felicitas Gonzalez Luna.
The trend in late 19th century ethnic restaurants (Chinese, Italian, Mexican) all tended to follow a similar pattern of first catering to their own community clientele at the back of groceries and markets in their respective enclaves, then expanding to other neighborhoods and often later “Americanizing” their menus to attract the general English-speaking American public. Chop suey, chow mein, spaghetti with meatballs, and the Mexican burrito can be seen as Americanized dishes from these ethnic cuisines. The story of Mexican food in San Francisco, (and California as a whole), identified as such, was perhaps a bit different, as the term “Mexican” at the time was not frequently used in advertising. Often the term “Spanish” stood in for “Mexican” as a descriptor in society at large. This was in an era in which, heretofore, Mexicans, and most aspects of Mexican culture in California, had often been denigrated by the press, and legally sanctioned economic oppression was the order of the day (see the 1855 California “Greaser Act”, and other notorious, racially motivated anti-immigrant legislation). From the Mexican War and the Gold Rush on, waves of anti-foreign political movements negatively affected the well-being of San Francisco’s Mexican Colony, which naturally included the native born.
A milestone in changing popular attitudes and tastes was San Francisco’s 1894 Midwinter Fair, an early version of a “Worlds Fair,” held in Golden Gate Park from January to July. Though controversial, many exhibits at the fair offered cultural exoticism from around the world, including re-creations of “native villages”, ethnic music and dance, as well as international foods. This was an era in which most people did not have the opportunity to travel, and fairs such as this provided a substitute way of experiencing world culture. One star attraction at this fair was a local 40-piece “Mexican Orchestra” led by Charles H. Cassasa. They were joined by a touring band from México led by Captain Encarnación Payén, and they performed a repertoire that included popular Mexican airs (“La Golondrina” by Narciso Serradell, “Sobre Las Olas” by Juventino Rosas) that were to become big hits in the United States. Local sheet music publishers expanded their repertoires to include Mexican and Spanish-inspired songs and instrumental numbers around this time, and concurrently a romanticized view of Mexican culture was becoming chic, at least to the more sophisticated locals. Chinatown, the Chinese, and California’s romanticized Spanish and Mexican beginnings were seen as intriguing aspects of local color by writers such as Bret Harte, Gertrude Atherton, and Joaquin Miller. Many others picked up on this, giving the public a more nuanced and sometimes sympathetic view of Mexican and Latin-American culture in the Golden State by the early 1900s.
Clearly, Mexican cuisine, and its California equivalent had been a staple of the culinary landscape here since the beginning of colonial conquest. But Luna’s, since the early 1890s, can be seen as a neighborhood ethnic eatery attempting to draw in the general non-Mexican population of the city to its doors by advertising in English-language publications and specifically to tourists. When and how Mexican cuisine became popular and spread outside of the North Beach enclave is an interesting question, as other ethnic cuisines were similarly on the move at the time, endearing themselves to the general public. Chinese, Italian, German, and French restaurants were also gaining wider acceptance and popularity and sprouting up in the downtown area. Luna’s may have been, in this regard, a prototype, a model for future Mexican entrepreneurs. That the restaurant became popular, there is no doubt, as Frank Norris’ enlightening description from 1899 makes clear. As will be seen, Luna’s offered a genuine elevated Mexican cuisine, alongside a few American standards (steaks, chops etc), and a respectable wine list. Luna’s clearly stood out in its day as the “place to go” for a Mexican dinner, attracting the attention of poets, novelists, and journalists.
After the small advertisement for Luna’s shown above, dated from January 1904, Luna’s moved to a downtown location at 529 California Street. The move to a more central location was a benefit for tourists and families, bearing in mind that the neighborhood behind the original Dupont street location was a notorious hell-hole. Another well documented ethnic restaurant of the period, “Original Coppa’s Restaurant” an Italian eatery owned by chef Giuseppe Coppa from Turin, Italy, was located just a few blocks away from the new Luna’s in the old Montgomery Block, and was also a favorite of San Francisco’s literati and artists. Tragically, just two years later, almost to the date, the whole of downtown San Francisco, as well as Luna’s, were completely wiped out and destroyed by the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Coppa’s survived the holocaust to re-open a few years later: Luna’s had a harder time. Romulo Luna did re-open in 1915 at 88 7th street near Mission, in the South of Market neighborhood. How much longer they stayed at this location is hard to tell. The Luna family appears to have left the City for a time, and later returned, but the restaurant had seen its better days, and was no longer the celebrated place that it once was. Doña Felicitas Gonzalez Luna returned to San Francisco and is listed in a city directory as late as 1924 along with several of her grown children, but there is no further mention of their once renowned Luna’s Restaurant.
Thanks to the generosity of author, restaurant historian and collector Henry Voigt, we can see this very rare 1904 menu from Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant in its heyday:
This bilingual Spanish-English menu shows a variety of elevated Mexican dishes, including pozole de cabeza, menudo, and pescado frito, plus even fancier dishes like riñones saltados, patas fritas, gallina en pipián, pescado a la mexicana, patos en salmí, costillas empapeladas, estofado de ternera, torrejas aztecas, turco de garbanzo, and many other uncommon Mexican delicacies. This elevated Mexican fare, while not expensive, must also have seemed fairly exotic to the average Americano in 1904. Some of the items, such as chiles rellenos, chile verde, and chorizo con huevo are commonly seen today in almost any Mexican restaurant. Perhaps if Luna’s had survived, some of the popular Mexican items that we know today, such as burritos, flautas and quesadillas would have emerged on the menu, as similar restaurants in the future were to become mindful of American tastes. Luna’s must have been renowned for their “Mexican Chocolate”, as it is mentioned on the front cover of the menu, and cost an amazing 25 cents a cup, while a complete “regular meal” could be had for 50 cents (plus tip, as Condy makes clear to Blix in Norris’ novel). All in all, an impressive menu and an enlightening look at an early formal Mexican restaurant’s culinary offerings. One of Romulo and Felicitas Luna’s sons, Miguel, is listed in city directories as a musician, and one wonders if he could have provided musical entertainment for the business, as was common in restaurants of the day.
After the earthquake and fire of 1906, Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant was all but forgotten, as the bohemian epicureans of San Francisco’s “Gay 90s” generation faded away, only to survive in the pages of Norris’ period romance, and this curious remembrance, found by Henry Voigt in the pages of Bohemian San Francisco: Its Restaurants And Their Most Famous Recipes, The Elegant Art of Dining, written by Clarence E. Edwords and published in 1914. It gives us a portrait of Luna’s Restaurant and its humble beginnings. Though it unfortunately reflects some of the prejudicial attitudes towards Mexicans described earlier in this article, the writer clearly admires the eatery, and paints an intimate portrait of the family business. He even gives a recipe for their chile relleno, which he describes as their most popular item. He begins by describing an earlier restaurant in an alley behind Luna’s (probably either Hinckley or Pinckney alleys) in the squalid area behind the county jail:
Of the old Mexican restaurants, those of us who can look back to the days of a quarter of a century ago remember old Felipe and Maria, the Mexican couple who kept the little place in the alley back of the old county jail, off Broadway. Here one had to depend entirely upon sentiment, or rather sentimentality, to be pleased. The cooking was truly Mexican for it included the usual Mexican disregard for dirt. Chattering monkeys and parrots were hanging around the kitchen, peering into pots and fingering viands, and they served to attract attention from myriads of cockroaches that swarmed about the walls. One could go to this place just on the theory that one is willing to try anything once, but aside from its picturesque old couple, and its Dantesque appearance, it offered nothing to induce a return unless it was to entertain a friend.
Edwords then describes Luna’s and gives rich detail about the family business in its original location. Ricardo the waiter is mentioned in Frank Norris’s “Blix”, and must have been a very memorable person:
Everyone who lived in San Francisco before the fire remembers Ricardo, he of the one eye, who served so well at Luna’s, on Vallejo and Dupont streets. Ricardo had but one eye but he could see the wants of his patrons much better than many of the later day waiters who have two. Luna’s brought fame to San Francisco and in more than one novel of San Francisco life it was featured.
In addition to Norris’ Blix, he may be referring here to another novel, Gelett Burgess’ The Heart Line (1907), in which the author describes in detail, though anonymously, several pre-earthquake Bohemian haunts in 1890s San Francisco.
Edwords continues describing Luna’s restaurant:
Entering the place one came into the home life of the Luna family, and reached the dining room through the parlor, where Mrs. Luna, busy with her drawn work, and all the little Lunas and the neighbors and their children foregathered in the window spaces behind the torn Nottingham curtains which partially concealed the interior from passers on the street. The elder sons and daughters attended to the wants of those who fancied any of the curios displayed in the long showcase that extended from the door to the rear of the room.
Passing through this family group one came to the curtained dining room proper, although there were a number of tables in the family parlor to be used in case of a rush of patrons. Luna’s dinners were a feature of the old San Francisco. They were strictly Mexican, from the unpalatable soup (Mexicans do not understand how to make good soup) to the ‘dulce’ served at the close of the meal. First came the appetizers in form of thin slices of salami and of a peculiar Mexican sausage, so extremely hot with chili pepino as to immediately call for a drink of claret to assuage the burning. Then came the soup which we experienced ones always passed over. The salad of modern tables was replaced by an enchilada, and then came either chili con carne or chili con pollo according to the day of the week, Sundays having as the extra attraction the chili con polio, or chicken with pepper. In place of bread they served tortillas, which were rolled and used as a spoon or fork if one were so inclined. Following this was what is known among unenlightened as ‘stuffed pepper,’ but which is called by the Spanish, from which country it gets its name, ‘chili reinas [rellenos].’ To signify the close of the meal came frijoles fritas or fried beans, and these were followed by the dessert consisting of some preserved fruit or of a sweet tamale. Fifty cents paid the bill and a tip of fifteen cents to Ricardo made him as happy and as profuse with his thanks as the present day waiter on receipt of half a dollar.
Accepting Luna’s as the best type of the Mexican restaurant of the days before the fire, our inquiry developed the fact that the dish on which he specialized was chili reinas [rellenos], and this is the recipe he used in their preparation: Roast large bell peppers until the skin turns black. Wash in cold water and rub off the blackened skin. Cut around the stem and remove the seed and coarse veins. Take some dry Monterey cheese, grated fine, and with this fill the peppers, closing the end with a wooden toothpick. Prepare a batter made as follows: Beat the yolks and whites of six eggs separately, then mix, and stir in a little flour to make a thin batter. Have a pan of boiling lard ready and after dipping the stuffed pepper into the batter dip it into the lard. Remove quickly and dip again in the batter and then again in the lard where it is to remain until fried a light, golden brown, keeping the peppers entirely covered with the boiling lard. Take the seeds of the peppers, one small white onion and two tomatoes and grind all together into a pulp, add a little salt and let cook ten minutes. When the chilis are fried turn the remainder of the batter into the tomatoes and boil twenty minutes, then turn this sauce over the peppers. This is a most delicious dish and can be varied by using finely ground meat to stuff the peppers instead of the cheese.
Another interesting item comes from “San Francisco As It Was, As It Is, And How To See It” by Helen Troop Purdy, 1912, from whence the above photo of Ricardo is taken:
An interesting place before the fire was Luna’s, a Mexican restaurant. Here you could burn your throat with tamales, enchiladas, or chile con carne, eat frijoles from little individual pots, drink delicious chocolate, or water which had cooled in an olla, and be served by Ricardo, whose portrait Frank Norris drew in Blix. Sometimes Ricardo would bring you the book, open at the passage to ask if you had read it. Luna’s disappeared at the time of the fire, and though we can get the same food now, we miss Ricardo and the foreign little place.
Romulo Luna did apparently re-open years later, as this 1915 advertisement from a magazine called “Army and Navy News” shows. The notice, from this obscure publication, gives the impression that he was attempting a comeback, perhaps after working as a caterer in the years following the earthquake. How much longer he stayed in business is a mystery still to be unraveled. The Langley City Directory does not list this restaurant, or any other called “Luna’s” in the two decades following the earthquake.
It only follows that a restaurant such as Luna’s in 1880-1906 would attract locals, tourists and literati to an out-of-the-ordinary cultural experience, a charming, pioneering family-run ethnic restaurant, alluring to those interested in enjoying bohemian life in pre-earthquake San Francisco without having to wander too far down those mysterious back alleys described by Norris. We may never know if Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant was indeed the first establishment in the city to offer formal Mexican cuisine in a quiet, respectable atmosphere, as Norris described it. This should be the subject of further research. Through the nostalgic reminiscences of the pre-earthquake Bohemian set, one can sense that Luna’s was the stand-out Mexican eatery of its day in Old San Francisco. We can say without reservation that Romulo and Felicitas Luna were pioneers in the Mexican restaurant business in California, and that they aspired to bring authentic Mexican cuisine out of the barrio and into mainstream American culture. At this they were prospering, until the tragic events of 1906 put an end to their dream, along with most of what we might have known of their efforts to popularize elevated Mexican cuisine, and their role in fostering the cultural awareness and acceptance that good food inevitably inspires.
© 2026 Zac Salem
This remembrance of “Luna’s Grand Mexican Restaurant” would not be nearly as complete without the kindness and support from the following people. Many thanks to:
Jeff and Pat Carr
Nick Robinson, Librarian Emeritus UC Berkeley
Professor John Koegel, California State University, Fullerton
Mr Henry Voigt, and his wonderful blog: theamericanmenu.com
Lillian Castillo-Speed, Head Librarian at the Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley
Zac Salem is a musician and collector specializing in the preservation of early 20th century Mexican popular music and song. He is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. He has contributed other articles to the Homestead Museum Blog, including the following:
“Los Cancioneros Acosta”: A Forgotten Page of Los Angeles’ Musical History, 1923-1933
and
“El Lavaplatos”: The Story Of A Mexican-American Corrido, 1930