Claude Taking a Dip - Thursday, 12/19/24 - California Academy of Sciences
By Carl Nolte, Columnist Nov 23, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
Something unusual happened on Tuesday at Le Central, the noted French bistro-style restaurant — a lunchtime salute to lunch.
Officially it was a celebration of Le Central’s 50th anniversary. Le Central opened for business on Bush Street in San Francisco in November 1974 and almost immediately became what one regular called “a San Francisco institution.”
Among its first customers were Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, then-Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown and clothier Wilkes Bashford, who helped set the style for well-dressed San Francisco men.
The three came every Friday for lunch at table No. 2 right next to the big plate glass window. “You could walk by on the street and look in the window and see who was there with Willie and the others,” said Sari Swig. She liked Le Central — the food, the atmosphere, the good company — and became a regular herself. She was a guest at the celebration.
She was not alone: The place was packed with Le Central veterans for the anniversary lunch, men and women who knew the wait staff, the bartenders, the owners, and most of all each other.
They listened as Brown described the guests who came to his Friday lunches: governors, senators, judges, lawyers, his friends Harry de Wildt and Matthew Kelly and Sandy Walker — all people who were in the cast of a good Herb Caen column.
Brown’s list might have sounded a bit dated, but current politicians were on hand, too.
Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin was there to shake hands and read a proclamation from the supervisors hailing Le Central for perfecting “the art of lunch.” Mayor London Breed sent a proclamation as well. Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, elegant in a dark suit, made a cameo appearance. Though he made no public remarks, one could feel the power in the room shift a bit.
Power was always in the air at Le Central, even away from the local celebrities at the front of the room. Le Central, located in a one-story brick building on Bush near Grant Avenue is on the edge of everything: near Chinatown, not far from Union Square, not far from Montgomery Street.
It’s not the oldest restaurant in the city: Tadich Grill (1849) and Sam’s Grill (1867) are far older, but Le Central, with its brick walls, its handsome bar and its French feel, had something else.
It was a place where partners would take a young lawyer to lunch to size them up. A quiet place to work out a business deal on a cocktail napkin.
It was a ritual, and it was not that long ago in the life of a city that is fond of rituals. “It was a very long lunch,” said Jim Anderer, a financial planner who has been a Le Central regular. “It was the famous three-hour lunch” — part business, part social affair, along with a martini, maybe two.
The food was an attraction as well, including chicken cordon bleu, escargot bourguignon and the specialty of the house, cassoulet, a dish that has been simmering at Le Central, they say, for 18,255 days.
The three-hour lunch, of course, has gone out of style. Even style has gone out of style, but that’s a story for another time.
Bob Anderson, an attorney, came in from his home in Mill Valley for the 50th anniversary. He’d been a regular, too, especially in the days when he worked in Montgomery Street law firms. He remembers the leisurely lunches, especially on Fridays, a tradition from another time.
“It’s not that we didn’t work,” he said. “We’d take a long Friday lunch, but that meant we’d be in the office working on Saturday.”
It’s just different now, he said. “The younger generation doesn’t do that. It’s all virtual.” And the role of the traditional office has changed, too. “Business doesn’t need the cost of an office anymore.”
But all life is virtual. People like to get together, and they like good food. So David Gabiné and his partner Ignacio Colorado bought the place when the longtime owners retired last March. It’s part of a tradition where ownership passes to veteran employees. Gabiné started as a bartender at Le Central in 2005. Colorado was a dishwasher. “We think this part of the city is coming back,” Gabiné said. “We believe San Francisco is coming back. We hope to stay as long as possible.”
“This place is an institution,” said communications specialist Janis Mackenzie, a former chair of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. “It’s part of the fabric of the city that I grew up in.”
Raising a glass to a storied San Francisco institution: Le Central
Greg