Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/73

 HOTELS RESTAURANTS CUISINE 51 San Diego's best-known restaurant is the Grant's Bivouac Grill, hung with military trappings and frescoed with battle scenes of America, Europe and Asia in memory of the great General. On the roof of a high bank building is a cafe whose specialty is the view of San Diego and the bay, and of the distant hills in whose laps lie the inns of Grossmont and Lakeside. The sloping gables of the Estudillo house in the Old Town shelter a genial nook with the at- mosphere of days when San Diego was an out- post, a rendezvous for brigands, priests, and sol- diers. Cuisine Fishes Fruits Wines. From the beotah of the Indian to the Spanish enchilada, from the pinole of the brown man to the ravigote of the Fairmont, 'tis a long route. By it has the California cuisine progressed from mush of acorn-meal and ground-barley soup to terrapin dressed with cognac and truffles ; from chicken, the gallma of the Spaniard, fried with cinnamon and nuts to King Pompano in a papiotte ruff and to frosted sweets served with grape- fruit and beaten cream. When the missionaries came to Alta California they found the aborigines grinding acorns in ce- mented baskets with a rubbing-stone. The} 7 taught them, instead, the savouriness of chiles and