The Founding of the Fior d’Italia
It was not uncommon among Italian immigrants of that era to desert the gold fields and resume a trade in San Francisco and its environs that they knew from the old country. Angelo Del Monte was one who made good with this fall-back strategy. Although he had left the gold camps in disgust, he learned something there that he put to use in San Francisco.
…. Angelo saw that miners and fortune hunters in the camps were paying exorbitant prices for food. He also noticed that when they came to San Francisco for supplies they spent a lot of money on the luxuries and commodities they could not enjoy in the gold fields. He realized that people wanted good food at reasonable prices, according to his granddaughter, Janette Biagini Barocca. Having been raised in an Italian boardinghouse, he also had firsthand experience of what it took to satisfy the working-class appetite in the palate of his countrymen.
The restaurant Angelo acquired was originally a Mexican one at 432 Broadway. It served, among other customers, a bordello upstairs. This much is sure. What is disputed was its name. It was either the Flor de Mexico or Cinco de Mayo. Whatever the true name was, Angelo changed it to Fior d’Italia, the flower of Italy, and he enjoyed a brisk trade quite early.
– an excerpt from The Fabulous Fior — over a Hundred Years in an Italian Kitchen by Francine Brevetti
