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Go to Pfaff's!

“The Best Viands, The Best Lager Beer”: Food, Drink, and Service at Pfaff’s

In addition to offering a space for

Walt Whitman and the American Bohemians to have conversations about the latest national and world news with other patrons, another main attraction of Pfaff’s was the

menu. Pfaff’s seems to have featured German fare, but clearly included French dishes at some locations.1 Charles Pfaff was an incomparable owner, and he had earned a reputation among his patrons for being “a model host” because he “personally looked after the comfort of each of his guests.”2 Pfaff promoted the dishes that he and/or his cook prepared by posting several placards, positioning them so as to draw “attention to the exquisite quality of the roast beef,” and he served some “traditional German specialties.”3 His cook made delicious German pancakes or “pfanne-kuchen” as well as beefsteak with onions and salted herring.4 The cook likely also prepared Pfaff’s “famous liver and bacon,” and served up “Schweitzer kase [Swiss Cheese], Schwarz brod [Black Bread], Frankfurtur wurst [Frankfurter wurst], and even sauerkraut.”5 The American Bohemians might have ordered fried breakfast fish, eggs and/or sweetbreads at the beer cellar.6 They would have been able to sample Limberger cheese, German sausages, “Welsh-rarebit,” and bean soup.7 Fitz James O’Brien paid tribute to Pfaff and his menu in a spirited toast he may have composed at the beer cellar, writing, “And here’s to Pfaff, our redoubtable host, / who’s equal to cutlet to soup and to roast.”8 One writer for Vanity Fair even credited Pfaff with serving fresh vegetables in the cellar: “Early in May, I ate radishes and asparagus. Did I get those esculents in the Country? Not any. At PFAFF’S in New York.” The writer went on to explain that the vegetables “were grown by the little-two penny gardeners, about Ninetieth street on . . . Manhattan Island,” a statement that suggests Pfaff favored locally grown foods and/or a farm-to-table approach to cooking at least when it came to these particular vegetables.9 And after a dinner of the aforementioned French and German cuisines with sides of recently harvested produce, Pfaff’s patrons could order slices of pie, thereby finishing their meals with the restaurant keeper’s delicious desserts.10
On

the opening night of the equestrian play Mazeppa in New York in June 1861, Walt Whitman and the Bohemians may have been present at the 647 Broadway location of Pfaff’s for an even more elaborate series of feasts. The meals were meant to honor

Ada Issacs Menken, a fellow Bohemian, who became “the reigning female celebrity actress of the Civil War period.”11 Menken had already received considerable attention in the national press, in 1860, the year before the dinner at Pfaff’s, when she claimed to have married the pugilist John Heenan. But when Heenan denied the marriage, journalists labeled Menken a bigamist and prostitute.12 Therefore, by 1861, Menken was already “a sensationalist actress, the victim of love and unethical journalism, and . . . one of a self-selected group of New York literati, a Bohemian.”13 On the night Menken first took the stage in the role of the Tartar prince in Mazeppa, a play that involved “faux nudity, war, and horse stunts,” Pfaff himself is said to have prepared “a platter of clams on the half shell, a tureen of chicken soup, a trencherman’s sirloin steak, and a deep-dish pie of mixed fruit” for her before she went onstage.14 Pfaff then provided Menken with a “thick turkey sandwich to tide her over during intermission” at the theater. Following the performance, Menken, accompanied by Whitman, Fitz James O’Brien, and her director, returned to Pfaff’s, and the group enjoyed “a hastily arranged celebration supper”—the second of its kind that Pfaff had prepared for the Bohemians that day—and, this time, for Menken, the meal included a gumbo of shrimp and oysters and a “slab of roast beef.”15
A

description of a casual lunch that might have also taken place at 647 Broadway offers further insight into the establishment’s usual daytime fare. In 1874, a writer for the Utica Daily Observer recalled having visited an unspecified location of Pfaff’s years earlier, at midday, where he saw the actresses Getty Gay and Ada Clare—whom the Pfaffians had dubbed the “Queen of Bohemia”— having lunch.16 The writer estimated that Clare was then approximately twenty-five years old and in love with the pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk, which suggests that the sighting of Clare occurred in the late 1850s. He went on to write that the young woman was then “glittering in the literary firmament,” and “she bore signs in her dress and jewelry that she was yet a favorite of fortune.” The reporter admits that finding these actresses at the beer cellar in the middle of the day was unusual; nevertheless, the pair was “seated at the table . . . enjoying their salt herring, black bread, and lager beer.”17 With this wide selection of German dishes available at the beer cellar for daily lunches and seemingly a more extended menu—both for regular dinners and special celebratory suppers—it is not surprising that on several occasions Thomas Donaldson recalled listening to Walt Whitman talk about how much he enjoyed having his evening meal “at the old Pfaff’s [where] the food was well cooked, German method, and cheap.”18

To accompany the international cuisine, Charles Pfaff offered a wide selection of drinks, including beer and brandy and a selection of European wines.19 The cellar was well known for its lager beer, which had become popular by the 1850s in New York saloons.20 Lager beer was first produced in

Bavaria in 1420; its name is from the German for “store.”21 The beer is made only from bottom-fermenting yeast, which Bavarian brewer John Wagner brought to America for the first time in 1842.22 Frederick and Maximilian Schaefer, immigrants from Prussia, were among the pioneers who introduced German lager beer to New York City that same year.23 George Gillig, also an early brewer, began producing lager beer in New York City as early as 1844. A tavern-keeper named Schwalbe, who had a small establishment in Chatham Street may have been the first person to sell lager beer in New York; it cost four cents per glass.24 By 1860, when the American Bohemians went every night to Pfaff’s cellar, forty-six breweries were in operation in New York City.25

Before brewers and sellers introduced New Yorkers to lager beer, barroom patrons were accustomed to English top-fermented ales, and porters, which could spoil in the hot American summers. Lagers were more highly carbonated, less heavy and less intoxicating, and they kept better.26 Because they required a slower fermentation process than ale, when properly aged,

they had a “tangy, effervescent taste” that was like “a valuable wine; a malt wine.”27 James Ford praised Charles Pfaff as “one of the first men in New York who thoroughly understood the art of drawing and keeping beer.”28 Whitman himself proclaimed “the ale (beer was but coming in then) good, and other liquid refreshments healthy,” while a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer said the restaurant’s “foaming beer . . . tasted as beer never tasted before and never will taste again.”29 One of Pfaff’s prefer red brands of beer in his Broadway establishments might have been “prime Speyers’ lager,” which was sometimes served to his patrons in “big old-fashioned glasses with handles.”30 This lager seems to have been one of Pfaff’s best sellers; in fact, the same writer that praised Pfaff’s “foaming beer” went on to claim that “[b]eer was the favorite beverage” of this [American Bohemian] coterie. The writer even goes to far as to state that the Bohemian club “became quite an important factor” in making the fairly new lager beer “the popular beverage, a revolution which forever drove away the daily brandy tippling, which was the practice of men of those times.”31

While it was more expensive than his lager bier,

Daily Graphic claimed that the sight of Pfaff and his well-stocked bar frequently filled patrons “with reverential awe” as they glanced “from the bland face of this unfathomable German to the colored bottles, which [stood] in potential rows behind him.”32 To his customers, Pfaff presented sound ales, red clarets, and coll champagnes.33 The colored bottles that filled Pfaff’s shelves were “white and red burgundies, Graves and Haut-Graves, Clos Regent and Bonn es Sauternes, Beaune and Volnay, Bonnes-Mares and Romanée, sherries and madeiras, Malvoisie Royal, and Cama de Lobos de Joa Vicente de Silva.”34 Having fine champagne at a dinner late in his life, Walt Whitman reminisced about his favorite New York hangout: “It took me back to Pfaff’s. What a judge of wines that fellow was! He made no misses.” Later, speaking of a favored supplier of brandy, Walt is again reminded of Charles Pfaff:

When I would go to see Pfaff after an interval from absence he would say, ‘First of all, before anything else, let us have a drink of something,’ and would go down in his cellar and bring out from his cobwebs a bottle of choice champagne—the best. Cobwebs are no discount for champagne! . . . And Pfaff never made a mistake—he instinctively apprehended liquors—having his talent, and that talent in curious prolixity. Almost. Often I would wonder—can he go wrong?35

Whitman was impressed by Pfaff’s knowledge of wines, and Pfaff was proud to show the poet that he had not lost his touch during the times when the two friends were unable to see each other regularly at the restaurant. Pfaff’s imported wines and spirits offered the poet a taste of Europe, and the cellar’s international atmosphere was as close to the European travel and dining experiences as Whitman came during his lifetime.

Pfaff was also quite adept at selecting and training the wait staff that would serve the aforementioned drinks and dishes because he had worked as a waiter in Basel himself, and “Switzerland [was] noted for its waiters.”36 There are few references to Pfaff’s servers, and when their presence is acknowledged, it is usually with regard to his later establishments, which were larger than 647 Broadway and, no doubt, required more staff members to meet the needs of his growing clientele. Albert Parry claims, “Buxom saxon girls served the guests” at Pfaff’s, and that “there were also a few male waiters.”37 But Parry and those who cite him seem to be the only sources to specifically mention female servers. In fact, although their work is usually praised, the few brief references to Pfaff’s employees are limited almost exclusively to Pfaff’s male waiters and his cook, presumably, also a man.

But regardless of whether Pfaff’s staff included men or women or whether he employed both sexes, the cellar’s cook and its waiters ensured that the food at Pfaff’s was “served so nicely that it gave one an appetite to look at it.” The staff was responsible for carry ing German and French cuisine presented on the “good china” and alongside the “solid silver” that Pfaff liked them to use when they brought glasses of prime lager to the tables.38 Pfaff’s waiters may have even arranged napkins at each place at the table. At the very least, they brought white cloth napkins to their customers, which Pfaff himself sometimes went to great lengths to preserve. In an 1860 diary entry, Thomas Butler Gunn recounted a row between fellow American Bohemians Fitz James O’Brien and Edward House at the beer cellar that ended on a humorous note: O’Brien mistook one of Pfaff’s table napkins for his adversary’s handkerchief and tried to return it to him. When House refused to accept it, Pfaff, who had been watching the scene unfold, hurried over to the American Bohemians to ensure the safety of his table settings: “And Pfaff rescuing the napkin, walked off with it!"39

While Pfaff seemingly prevented the American Bohemians from destroying his dinner napkins, Pfaff’s waiters were the peacemakers who played an important role in soothing the riled tempers of tipsy American Bohemians in the barroom. In Jay Charleton’s (pen name for Jay Goldsmith) account, Walt Whitman and

George Arnold were having their “after dinner punch” one night at Pfaff’s when they became angry enough to throw punches of a very different sort. The Civil War was a frequent topic of conversation among the Bohemians, and this night was no exception. Arnold was for the Southern rebellion and reportedly raised the toast, “Success to the Southern Arms!” The poet was an advocate of the Union cause (for which his brother George was then fighting) and, more broadly, for the national unity he envisioned in his poetry.40 The rest of Charleton’s story is a blur of action, with Walt’s “mawler” being thrust close to George’s ear, Arnold’s bottle of liquor coming within inches of Walt’s head, and the bewildered Charles Pfaff exclaiming in a heavy accent, “Oh! mine gots, mens, what's you do for dis?” and condemning such displays of violence in his establishment.41 At least one account reveals how “Pfaff and his white-apron brigade came trembling forward with olive branches in their musical Heidelberg voices” to sooth Arnold and Whitman, a task at which they soon succeeded.42 Here, Pfaff’s wait staff are portrayed as a “brigade,” a well-drilled unit of peacekeepers all wearing the same uniform and fully prepared to keep customers from making a scene and disturbing others in the cellar. For performing these duties, the waiters received their “principal” salary directly from Pfaff himself since at this time and even by the time the proprietor opened his final restaurant, “the custom of tipping’ had not . . . attained its present proportions.” Although Pfaff did not prohibit his waiters from receiving tips, it was clear that he “regarded the practice with disfavor.”43

Most of Pfaff’s patrons came to the cellar,

then, because they could eat traditional German and French dishes, taste the proprietor’s “best Rhine wine,” and drink the lager beer that Pfaff was so adept at keeping and his waiters so skilled at serving.44 With his German beer and his wines from France and Portugal among other countries in combination with his foreign newspapers, Pfaff offered the American Bohemians a European barroom on American soil. He made a real effort to establish and maintain what Joanna Levin has called a “foreign ambiance”

to the extent that visiting the beer cellar “simulated foreign travel.” In other words, a trip to the saloon was also a journey through Germany, France, and even Switzerland, all of which were part of the barkeeper’s own past.45 Pfaff’s dedication to his European roots and his central location on Broadway certainly appealed to the men and women who declared themselves America’s first Bohemian group. Pfaff’s atmosphere and the American Bohemians it attracted made the beer cellar “a landmark as familiar as . . . Castle Garden, Tammany Hall, and P. T. Barnum’s museum.”46

But there were two even more practical reasons why the Bohemian crowd came to Pfaff’s and stayed so late into the night: the low prices and “the genial host’s leniency in the matter of collecting bills.”47

Pfaff permitted his “odd customers to carry a tab,” and he sold food and beverages at low costs.48 A. L. Rawson, one of the Pfaffians’ biographers, reported that at Pfaff’s “[A] dinner could be had for half a dollar, or a substitute for a dime or rather for shillings or sixpences, as money was reckoned then. A good cup of coffee was three cents, and other things in proportion.”49 Julian Chambers explains that Pfaff’s was the place where “a dinner with [beer?] could be bought with two York shillings.”50 In fact, Pfaff sold his food and drink “at the lowest price which [would] stand the mathematical test of a close calculation of profit and loss, ” and a writer for the New-York Traveler and U.S. Hotel Directory called Pfaff’s “the cheapest and most agreeable place to dine, sup, or imbibe lager at in Gotham.”51 One reporter went so far as to declare that at Pfaff’s, “the cooking was abominable and the table linen wasn’t of immaculate purity,” so the men and women of American Bohemia did not “assemble in a beer cellar by choice . . . they met there because they were poor.”52 Many of the American Bohemian group made their living by writing for the newspapers: “one night the party would be flush and again it would be without a cent,” depending on whether or not they had sold their articles, stories, or other writings to New York periodicals.53 They ordered Pfaff’s lager instead of his wine because it was less expensive.54 But Pfaff often refilled their glasses free of charge. He always “[took] the eccentricities of genius into consideration when he came to make up his books,” and he “refused to turn a group of customers that attracted so many other patrons to the cellar away hungry.”55

While there is no denying Pfaff’s generosity to the men and women of Bohemia, there is considerable disagreement as to how much credit they were actually given. On the one hand, Pfaff had a reputation for being very lenient, offering “plenty” of credit and allowing the Bohemians to pay their debts when they could.56 Pfaff may have given so much food and so many free drink refills to the American Bohemians that it might “have taken a goodly share of the profits on his general custom to cover his generosities to his impecunious literary friends.”57 In contrast, Julian Chambers indicates that Henry Clapp had originally gone to Pfaff’s because the restaurant owner “gave him a small and brief credit,” and noted that Pfaff continued to limit the Bohemians’ tab: “The amount rarely exceeded $5 and settlement was expected at the end of every week.”58

When they

Figure 4: Scrip Note for Charles Pfaff's restaurant

were not buying refreshments on credit or paying cash to settle a debt, the American Bohemians and other Pfaff’s patrons also had the option of using scrip notes or gift certificates, and, potentially tokens as well, to pay for their meals. In 1862, if not before, Pfaff offered gift certificates in the amounts of 25 and 50 cents: the former read, for example, “CHARLES PFAFF RESTAURANT PROMISE TO PAY TWENTY FIVE CENTS IN REFRESHMENTS AND MEALS at No. 647 Broadway, N. Y.” (See Figure 4, Appendix A).59 The twenty-five cent note is illustrated with a nature scene featuring two deer, a male and a female, in the foreground, while in the background is a waterfall, and a large tree on a hill overlooking the deer. A man who may be a hunter appears to be standing behind the tree in order to watch and/or quietly take aim at the deer. This may signal that venison is on the menu for the hunter, and, perhaps, at Pfaff’s as well.

During the Civil War, Pfaff also dispense d tokens that may have been used as currency at his restaurants. In fact, Pfaff “was a well-known issuer of Civil War tokens,” and produced them for both his 647 and 653 Broadway locations.60 The most easily recognizable token for the cellar was issued from 1862 to 1864. It included Pfaff’s address, “CHES. PFAFF, RESTAURANT / 647 / BROADWAY, N. Y.,” on the obverse or front side of the token, and it had a full-length monk on the reverse (See

Figure 5, Appendix A).61 A writer for a stamp and coin magazine known as “Nemo” de scribed the monk as a “big-bellied fellow in canonicals” and quipped, “if Mr. Pfaff had given us a frier instead of a friar, it would have been a much better sign.”62 The image of the monk on the back of the token likely comes from the surname Pfaff, which may derive from the German word “Pfaffe,” meaning “pope” or “priest.”63 Nemo’s linguistic play here draws on the religious associations with Pfaff’s surname and on his status as a restaurateur. Nemo is suggesting that Pfaff ought to have used a “frier”—a young chicken or other meat for frying—to as a symbol of his cellar rather than a “friar” or religious figure on his token.

Pfaff had at least two

additional tokens produced for his 653 Broadway location. Both of them had a gilt brass “1776” double eagle obverse. The reverse of one was a yellow cardboard insert printed with “CHAS. PFAFF’S RESTAURANT, 653 BROADWAY.” The reverse of the second coin was a blue cardboard insert with the aforementioned name and address, as well as pictures of two food items, presumably from Pfaff’s menu (See Figure 6, Appendix A).64 Both illustrations appear to be of meats or main courses, possibly a ham and a beefsteak, respectively. These images, no doubt, advertised Pfaff’s fare while the tokens were in circulation since customers could carry in their pockets a visual reminder of what they might have for dinner at the restaurant. These tokens may have also helped to ensure that Pfaff’s customers had several options or forms of payment available to them when they were ready and/or able to discharge their debts. They may have allowed Pfaff himself an alternative way to accept payments and make change in his restaurant since there was a shortage of government-issued currency during the Civil War.

But the American Bohemians were not always eager to pay their checks. An anonymous member of the “old crowd” of Bohemians that frequented Pfaff’s wrote that

Richard Grant White, a musical critic and a Shakespearean scholar, often jokingly disputed with Pfaff both over payment for food and drinks and the proprietor’s grasp of the English language: “Old Pfaff, when he wanted the beer bill settled would always say, ‘You will pay me my monish;” and R. G. W. stoutly insisted that the bill would remain unsettled until the Dutchman said shall.’”65 But seemingly, Pfaff never said “shall” and R. G. W. prided himself on this “linguistic triumph.”66 Edmund Clarence Stedman, however, recalls that Pfaff not only paid for many of the American Bohemians’ orders at the cellar, but he actually provided financial support to some of them in their old age.67 At the same time, it seems that Pfaff “was easily moved to sympathize with any one who was in trouble and was generous with his money” when it came to any of his patrons not just the American Bohemians.68 Even though some of the beer cellar’s customers took advantage of Pfaff’s willingness to give,

and owe d him money for food that they were never going to or would never be able to compensate him for, he did not hesitate to help the “beggars and tramps” that made regular visits to his cellar.69 He would almost always give packages of food, “a huge hunk of bread” or even a few coins to those in need.70

Numerous accounts insist that Pfaff would not refuse the Bohemians credit, in part, because he “was too fond of their companionship for that” and he “loved dearly to hear them compare notes and exchange compliments and witticisms.”71 Indeed, Pfaff, who is most often characterized as a friendly and perpetually jolly host, may have enjoyed the company of Clapp, Clare, and their friends. The American Bohemians and their gatherings likely proved a form of entertainment for Pfaff and his customers. But even if Pfaff did not always find their antics amusing, the American Bohemians were, to put it simply, good for business. Although Pfaff was not as learned or as literary as his bookish and cosmopolitan clientele, he was an intelligent businessman, and he understood that the Bohemians would bring an audience of inquisitive customers to his establishment.72 Pfaff, therefore, continued to serve the Bohemians, and that “little group of poets and humorists attracted as much custom to good Mr. Pfaff’s beer-saloon as did his fresh, cool lager.”73 It was, in part, because of Pfaff's kindness and his willingness to allow the Bohemians to meet in his cellar and to run up a tab, that his clientele grew, and the business was profitable enough to support the bar-owner and his son.74

The American Bohemians may not have always settled their debts with their host, but Pfaff’s business did profit in yet another way from their presence: their connections with New York magazines and newspapers. The American Bohemians, for example, were among the major contributors to

Henry Clapp, Jr.’s New-York Saturday Press. Beginning on September 10, 1859, and ending more than one year later on December 15, 1860, the previously mentioned advertisement instructing customers to “Go to Pfaff’s” for “The Best of Everything at Moderate Prices” and for reading material in a variety of foreign languages, appeared almost every week in the paper. Although certain ly an exaggeration, in 1886, Hugh Farrar McDermott claimed that, in Clapp’s paper, “There was always space found for half a dozen of grand puffs for Charley Pfaff’s Bohemian cellar.”75 It is true that Clapp published at least twelve pieces that mentioned “Pfaff’s” by name and two articles with the title of “Pfaff’s” before the paper ceased publication for the first time in December 1860. The first article named after the beer cellar appeared on December 3, 1859. Here, the writer praised Pfaff’s as “the womb of the best things that society has heard for many-day.”76 The second piece on “Pfaff’s” was printed on March 3, 1860, and described the place as a saloon “extensively patronized by young literary men, artists, and that large class of people called Germans,” who may have been attracted to the beer cellar, at least in part, because of Charles Pfaff’s own German heritage and his menu that included several German dishes.77 Furthermore, as Mark Lause has pointed out, Germans in the United States “eventually attained the reputation as the most radical of the émigré groups,” and the “cosmopolitan radicalism” of antebellum New York “continued to inform Bohemianism.” Thus, the American Bohemians and the German and French patrons who gathered at Pfaff’s may have also found some common ground in terms of their social and political beliefs.78

Although the New-York Saturday Press ceased publication in December 1860 due to a lack of funds, Clapp resumed printing the paper nearly five years later, on August 5, 1865. In the first issue of the paper’s new series Clapp would seemingly pick up where he left off by renewing his advertising relationship with Pfaff. Here, Clapp published an advertisement for Pfaff’s, then located at “No. 653 Broadway.” The advertisement for the new location no longer mentioned Pfaff’s cigars or his French and German newspapers, but rather the ad promoted the establishment by calling it “the most celebrated restaurant in the country” and reminding new customers of the literary and artistic men and women that had made Pfaff’s name and reputation in New York and well beyond. The advertisement presents Pfaff’s as the place to visit in the city, announcing that the “grounds [are] crowded day and night.”79 Pfaff would continue placing various advertisements for the restaurant in the Press through the week of June 2, 1866, the very date that the newspaper permanently ended.

While it is possible that Pfaff may have paid for the ads to run on a weekly basis, the Press certainly reached an audience of literary and artistic men and women—the kind of American Bohemian crowd that would have felt right at home at Pfaff’s, and who, in turn, would have drawn even more customers anxious to see them in the cellar. At the same time, it is tempting to speculate that Henry Clapp, could have easily written any of the articles that applauded Pfaff’s while he was sitting at the head of the table in the vault or on one of the many nights he returned to his room after having had his dinner and smoked a pipe at Pfaff’s.

Yet, Clapp would have had no problem giving Pfaff’s bad press if he had not liked the owner or its menu, which, as I will show later, is precisely what happened when Pfaff’s at 653 Broadway temporarily came under new management.

Just as the members of the American Bohemian group were among the primary contributors to the New-York Saturday Press, they were, as previously mentioned, also largely responsible for Vanity Fair, a humor and literary magazine that ran the same advertisement for the 647 Broadway location of Pfaff’s as the Press. The advertisement announcing Pfaff’s cigars and his moderate prices appeared on a weekly basis in Vanity Fair beginning on December 31, 1859, and ending after the March 17, 1860, issue. The fact that the Bohemians were instrumental in publicizing the cellar both by word of mouth and in the press might explain why Pfaff was generous to them since it suggests that Pfaff and his artistic clientele had a symbiotic relationship, exchanging food, drinks, and payment for publicity and praise in periodicals. Amos Cummings, writing for the Brooklyn Standard Union, goes so far as to suggest that it may have been an article about Pfaff’s written for a paper by Fitz James O’Brien that brought customers to the cellar in the first place. A writer for the Chatham New York Courier tells a similar story, only this time the writer credits Clapp with making Pfaff and his saloon famous in the press:

Clapp used to lunch [at Pfaff’s], and one day the coffee and eggs so impressed the famous Bohemian, that he then and there, wrote a column about a puff of the caravansary, but, although a puff it was in Clapp’s best style, and he could make the rankest kind of a puff so witty and interesting, that it would be acceptable to any journal.”80

Clapp’s article, along with pieces by some of the other Bohemian journalists, “made Pfaff famous, and he became rich.”81 As Cummings points out, it became the “fashion” among the Bohemians “to puff him [Pfaff] and his coffee and veal cutlets, and other culinary triumphs.”82

Because of

the publicity the Bohemians’ gave Pfaff’s and because of the proprietor’s efforts or, as a writer for The Fireside Companion put it best, in “doing [his] business not only well, but better than anybody else,” Pfaff, like “Delmonico or Stewart, or Tiffany, or any of our most successful tradesmen . . . work[ed] their names into the very literature of the country.” Indeed, Pfaff’s name would appear not only in advertisements in periodicals, but in Whitman’s poetry and in Harding-Davis’s novel among other literary works. As a result, it became “as natural to speak of DELMONICO, of PFAFF, of STEWART, or of TIFFANY, as when, writing of banking matters, to speak of BARING or ROTHSCHILD.83 Here, Pfaff receives very high praise; as a result of his talent and hard work as a proprietor, as well as the praise he received in print, his name appears alongside that of the Delmonico family, the owners of “Delmonico’s,” which became the “most important U. S. restaurant of the nineteenth century.”84 In return, Pfaff “was wise enough to appreciate his guests and advertisers,” and the bar- owner “never forgot that he owed his success to the advertising that newspaper men had given him.”85

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“The Best Viands, The Best Lager Beer”: Food, Drink, and Service at Pfaff’s

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