“BISCUIT ST. FRANCIS, POTAGE KROUMIR, CRABAPPLE JELLY, STEAMBOAT POTATOES, ARABIAN SANDWICHES, TUTTI FRUITI PUNCH”

HIRTZLER, Victor. Hotel St. Francis Cook Book. Chicago: Hotel Monthly Press, (1919). Tall octavo, original green cloth gilt, patterned endpapers. $750.

Second, expanded edition of this well-known cookbook from San Francisco’s landmark Hotel St. Francis, with frontispiece portrait of the author in his trademark fez, and including a model menu for each day of the year, with hundreds of recipes. Boldly inscribed by Hirtzler across the front free endpaper: "To Mrs. H. W. Lewis, a souvenir from The Hotel St. Francis, yours very sincerely, Victor Hirtzler, March 26th, 1921.

Hirtzler was the chef at the Hotel St. Francis during its first years of operations. Undoubtedly the most richly appointed and best-known hotel in the West, the Hotel St. Francis quickly gained a reputation for luxury and indulgence. As executive chef, Hirtzler was entrusted with extending that reputation into the hotel's restaurant, where he became famous for his European-inspired cuisine and his astonishingly lengthy menus. Outside of the kitchen, Hirtzler lived up to the stereotype of a chef. He was haughty and arrogant and could regularly be seen throughout the hotel, commanding the staff imperiously in a thick French accent while clad in any one of a dozen bizarre costumes, always topped off by his signature fez. With index. First published in 1910 as L'Art Culinaire: Hotel St. Francis Book of Recipes and Model Menus. Unlike the first edition, which provided only model menus separate from the recipes, this edition provides a menu for each day of the year, with recipes accompanying the menu. Cagle & Stafford 363. Bitting 230-31.

Faint spotting to title page and preliminaries, slightest rubs to spine ends and corners. An extremely good inscribed copy.