Fior Gazette
WHY WE CALL FIOR THE ‘OLDEST’ ITALIAN RESTAURANT IN AMERICA
Often patrons ask us if the Fior d’Italia is really the first Italian restaurant in this country. They misunderstand. The Fior was certainly not the first Italian restaurant to be built. Those worthy establishments are long gone. But we are the longest continuously operating Italian restaurant in the country.
As recounted in the book, “The Fabulous Fior: Over 100 Years in an Italian Kitchen” by Francine Brevetti, when Bob and Jinx Larive bought the restaurant in 1990, they set about researching whether the Fior was indeed the oldest Italian restaurant in the nation. They retained Isabel Maxwell, senior vice president of Research on Demand.
Maxwell explored the archives of several Eastern daily newspapers, Gourmet Magazine, and consulted online search engines. She found that the oldest existing restaurant in the country is the Union Oyster House in Boston, founded in 1826, 60 years earlier than the Fior…. however it boasts a seafood menu and does not present itself as an Italian restaurant. The Despigno family has run Ralph’s in Philadelphia since 1900, 14 years after Angelo Del Monte started the Fior.
No other contenders came near. And so we are quite content to continue calling ourselves the “Oldest Italian Restaurant” in the country.
NARROW GAUGE INN – YOSEMITE SPRING GETAWAY
Twenty-five years ago Richard VanAman was introduced to do the Fior d’Italia by his San Francisco cousins. “Instantly I was hooked”, he said. Ten years later he took his girlfriend Martha to the restaurant and she was equally impressed.
Now married, the couple still comes regularly to the Fior d’Italia even though they have to tramp down the mountains from Yosemite National Park where they run an inn and a fine dining restaurant. The VonAmans visited us recently again. “No special occasion,” said Martha. “We’ve just got to get out of the mountains once in a while.”
“It wouldn’t be a complete trip to the city without at least one visit to our favorite restaurant,” said Richard. “Often we will dine more than once at the Fior d’Italia during a trip. The staff is always welcoming and treats us like family. We keep copies of the menu at our desk at the Narrow Gauge Inn and refer our guests to our favorite spot in San Francisco.”
The Narrow Gauge Inn (www.narrowgaugeinn.com) offers 26 mountainside rooms just outside the boundaries of the National Park. With a seasonal pool, hot tub and gardens, it has become a popular venue for weddings. Its dining room is known to be one of the best in the Yosemite area.
2007 FIOR WINE DINNER SERIES
Our wine dinners inlcude a multi-course gourmet meal specially prepared by executive Chef Gianni Audieri to compliment the wines featured. The wine dinners are served in the restaurant’s exclusive Tuscany Room. During the meal the winemaker will present the featured wine, making the experience personal, enlightening and educational for our guests.
The wine dinners are held every last Thursday of the month at 6:30pm.
May 31, Ravenswood – Sonoma County
June 28, Sanford Winery – Central Coast
July 26, Simi Winery – Sonoma County
August 30, Seghesio – Sonoma County
September 27, Merryvale – Napa Valley
October 25, Jacuzzi Vineyards – Carneros
THE DRIVING LESSON AND PLATE OF GNOCCHI
People invite friends, clients and loved ones to this restaurant from various reasons, primarily to please them. This is the first time we’ve ever heard of one of our cherished customers holding out the promise of a meal at this restaurant to lure a daughter into completing her driving education.
Jocelyn Fiset was sweating through her driving practice and complained that her turf on the eastern side of the Bay area was a hard one on which to learn the technicalities of shifting gears and lanes. Until her father, longtime Fior Marketing Consultant Gary Fiset made a bargain with her.
“I promised Jocelyn that if she practiced driving to San Francisco and I would buy her a plate of pasta at the Fior”. “How could I refuse?”, Jocelyn reasoned. “I started out driving from Alamo through the Caldecott Tunnel, over the Marin/San Rafael Bridge, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to the Fior for a, as my dad calls it, ‘Car-bo load’ and then back home again.”
Thanks to their weekly drives up to Mason St., she has gotten good enough to pass my license test, Jocelyn asserted. “I couldn’t have done it without refueling with some gnocchi at the Fior.”
As much as we celebrate our pasta, we believe that man cannot live by carbohydrates alone. The next time Gary and Jocelyn drive to the restaurant on the ground floor of the San Remo Hotel, we encourage them to check out our many veal, chicken, lamb, pork and seafood dishes. Yum.
BAY AREA TRAVEL WRITERS LUNCHEON
Travel writers are always looking for some new, undiscovered place to tell the readers about. Still the Bay Area Travel Writers, www.batw.org, the local professional organization of travel writers and photographers, were happy to come and dine at the Fior on Saturday, March 17. If the Fior is not new, at least the current venue is for the restaurant. The organization had for their speaker Doug McConnell of the Channel 4 television show Bay Area Backroads.
Charming and generous before the audience, McConnell recounted the course of his career and announced the eventual unveiling of his own web site www.openroad.tv. Soon to go live, he promised, this site will feature travel information and planning tools relating to the American West with broadcast video quality.
The BATW concluded its afternoon at the restaurant with a visit to the San Remo Hotel upstairs.
