Taste of the Waterfront: The Old Clam House, Since 1861

According to Herbert Asbury, in his book The Barbary Coast: An Informal History to the San Francisco Underworld (author also of The Gangs of New York, inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s film of the same name), the term “shanghai” likely originates in its earliest usage as a verb, along the waterfront of San Francisco. It is probably about the same time that The Old Clam House — first named The Oakdale Bar & Clam House — opened its doors in 1861. Since there were no ships sailing directly by sea between San Francisco and Shanghai, a “Shanghai voyage” meant a long and hazardous cruise, and a sailor “forcibly impressed into a vessel’s crew” was likewise “sent to Shanghai.” One could easily intuit the term’s soon colorful evolution to becoming a verb. While the crime itself only appeared on the books with “An Act to Prohibit Shanghaiing,” passed by Congress in 1906, before which — certainly along the waterfront — the practice was lucrative for all parties involved less the mark, which also made it commonplace.

The Old Clam House prides itself as one of the oldest restaurants in the city. It also cherishes the fact that its bar area today consists of the original structure — along with its original tin ceiling — which remains in the same location nearly 160 years later. The Tadich Grill (240 California St) may be the only San Francisco restaurant with an earlier date of establishment — as Nikola Budrovich, Frano Kosta, and Antonio Gasparich, newly arrived from Croatia, put up a sign that read Coffee Stand along the wharf, in 1849. From their modest beginnings, serving grilled fish over charcoal to merchants and sailors and anyone else along the pier, it was John Tadich, another Croatian immigrant and long-time bartender, who bought the establishment almost forty years later, in 1887, the restaurant having undergone changes in name and location several times over. While the 1906 earthquake and fires brought The Tadich Grill (then known as the “The Cold Day Restaurant”) to ashes, fires that swept from the Mission District from South Beach were all but contained at 20th Street, and The Old Clam House was spared, though much of the surrounding Islais Creek marsh and estuary were overwhelmed with refuse and debris.

For its longevity, as a gathering place for waterfront workers, from the year Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of the United States, when San Francisco boasted only sixty thousand inhabitants, and as the Bay Area’s fishing industry flourished, on through to its survival of the 1906 earthquake — the restaurant maintains its tradition, picked up somewhere along the way, for offering patrons a shot of clam juice on the house. Discover yourself on a cool grey day passing by The Alemany Farmer’s Market, on Bayshore or exiting the freeway at the base of Bernal Heights, and saddle up to taste for yourself. A long ways from China, perhaps the oldest haunt from the old waterfront may be, at least some things might not taste too far from how they used to be.