Tadich Grill
King of Restaurants
By Adam S. Eterovich
Tadich
Grill is the oldest restaurant in San Francisco and California. It has a
genealogy of being in Dalmatian-Croatian ownership since 1849. It was located
on Long Wharf as the New World Coffee Saloon and Market, the original
propietors were: Nikola Budrovich from the Island of Hvar; Antonio Gasparich
from Dalmatia; and Frank Kosta from Dubrovnik. John Tadich is a native of
Starigrad on the Island of Hvar, Dalmatia, Croatia. His restaurant was one of the landmarks of
San Francisco and was one among the few that the sponsors of all the great
public affairs used to recommend to the visitors as a reliable eating place.
In
the Diamond Jubilee edition of the “San Francisco Newsletter,” which was issued
on September 5, 1925, we find under the heading: “Tadich Grill,” the following
article: “There are still landmarks in San Francisco, in spite of the fire of
1906, but they are mostly human landmarks, instead of buildings and monuments,
and very few are left at that. Such a
one is John V. Tadich, of the original ‘Cold Day Restaurant,’ at 545 Clay
Street. “A talk with Mr. Tadich is like turning back the leaves of historical
San Francisco; he can tell you of the little tent operating on the northwest
corner of Leidesdorff and Commercial Streets, prior to 1849, where coffee was
served to sailors and their kind; of a certain Captain Leidesdorff, who docked
his ship at this point, with its cargo of iron from Belhouse & Co. of
Manchester, England, and whose crew deserted to go out to gold mines; of the
small coffee house tent being transformed by this cargo into a corrugated iron
house, which stood in this spot until Mr. Tadich, in 1882, turned it into a
real restaurant. “He spoke feelingly of the ‘old days’ when most of the
publishing houses and newspapers and journals were printed around this
neighborhood; when notable men and women writers congregated to have dinner
with him; and way, way back in the days when customers paid as much as $1.00
for one boiled egg. “and then he told me how his cafe became appelated with the
name: ‘The Cold Day Restaurant.’ “on the corner of Stockton and Geary there
used to stand the old ‘Wigman,” the headquarters of the Republican party ticket
for assessor, at his nomination spoke the words which later became famous: ‘I
thank you, gentlemen,’ he said, and then added: ‘It is a cold day when I get
left.’ “But when election came, it was a cold day for Badlam, for John Seibe,
the Independent-Republican, was elected. (SF News 1925)