Tables from the Rubble

Tables from the Rubble, an interactive book, transports readers to San Francisco in the years just after the Great Earthquake of 1906. Amid the ruins of a crumbled city, restaurants rose to feed the hungry and lead the recovery. Today, a handful of the restaurants that opened in those boom years remain, serving customers in the same spaces they first opened – offering food, drinks, and stories with a direct link to a 100-year-old past.


Featured restaurants include Swan Oyster Depot, Liguria Bakery, Comstock Saloon, Sam Wo, the Palace Hotel, the House of Shields bar, John's Grill and Schroeder's. Tables from the Rubble includes new videos and photos from each restaurant, dozens of historic photos, a gallery of old Palace Hotel menus going back 100 years, an interactive map, recipes – including the recipes for Swan Oyster Depot's clam chowder and the Palace Hotel's Green Goddess salad dressing – and links to original sources. Readers can explore old San Francisco in an entirely new way.