Crab Louis (SF Poodle Dog?); Shell Shock & Awe

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

SHELL SHOCK & AWE & MISC.

    Some notes between days of parking tickets.

SHELL SHOCK & AWE--This week's VILLAGE VOICE (www.villagevoice.com) has a
cover story on "shell shock and awe" that you might want to read.  That
article and the issue itself have the usual Bush=Hitler bashing that make it
almost unreadable.

LOATHSOME NEW YORKERS--This week's NEW YORK PRESS (www.nypress.com) has a
letter to the editor that comments that William Safire neither lives nor
works in New York City (responding to his placement in the "Fifty Most
Loathsome New Yorkers" article).  Plus, in a NEW YORK PRESS "Best of" issue,
Safire was voted Best New York Times Columnist....You can say this much about
the PRESS and the VOICE--they're free.

GARLIC BREAD--I should have mentioned that I have a 1935 "garlic bread" and
more garlic in the ADS-L archives.

AOL MESSAGES--I just got three--one "FROM A SKINNY PERSON TO A FAT PERSON"
and two annoying messages on how to block annoying messages.

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CRAB LOUIS

   I requested "turkey," "cioppino," and "crab Louis" from the Peter Tamony
archives.  The "cioppino" papers were voluminous, cost over $20, and added
nothing about its origin.
   See the ADS-L archives for letters to Clementine Paddleford about "crab
Louis," asserting a Seattle origin...The classic French restaurant "Poodle
Dog" existed in San Francisco from 1850-1922, killed by Prohibition.  There's
a lack of good Google info on Poodle Dog chef Louis Coutard.  I'll look him
up in my databases (American Periodical Series, New York Times).


12 June 1952, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:
   One source says that it is a Washington State specialty.  Helen Evans
Brown, in her excellent cookbook, "West Coast Cookery," writes that Crab
Louis was served in Solari's, a San Francisco restaurant, in 1914.
(John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD AND DRINK mentions Solari's and
the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, but not the Poodle Dog--ed.)

29 June 1954, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, pg. 19, cols. 1-2, Herb Caen:
   ...Louis Coutard, the chef at the old Old Poodle Dog, concocted the
delicacy that still bears his name--Crab Louis.

SAN FRANCISCO--CITY ON GOLDEN HILLS (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company,
1967) by Herb Caen and Don Kingman:
Pg. 78:  Louis Coutard, the chef at the old Poodle Dog, proudly concocting
the delicacy that still bears his name--crab Louis.

25 September 1977, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Herb Caen:
   Major minor mystery: Crab Louis, the immortal invention of Chef Louis
Coutard at the very old Old Poodle Dog, is known as Crab Coutard in London
and "Pardonnez-moi?" in Paris.

30 July 1978, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Herb Caen:
   Louis Coutard, the old-time Poodle Dog chef who invented Crab Louis, must
whirl like a dervish every time a person orders his dish and the waiter or
waitress asks, "What kind of dressing?"  It's the dressing, a variation on
Thousand Island, that makes the salad a Looey.