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grilled liver dinner 2020
grilled liver
grilled onions
buttered peas
mashed potatoes
I was asked what I wanted for dinner on this special day. After pondering for a while, a menu item from my childhood I hadn't thought of for decades popped into my mind: Liver and onions!
When I was a kid my father would take me out to lunch! We would go to different places; one was the lunch counter at
Woolworths, the "
five-and-dime store" store on the corner of
Powell and
Market Street, which was an
Owl Drug Store before that. There were actually two counters at
Woolworths, one upstairs and one in the basement, both of them across from showcases filled with various merchandise.
photographer unknown
I loved going there as before or after lunch I would watch the
cable cars being turned around on the turntable on
Powell Street in front; the conductors would do the turning but the public was welcome to join in. I did it quite a few times but the public was banned from joining in sometime in the seventies I think; fear of being sued. Too bad as it was great fun and a thrill to be a part of it especially when you're a kid.
Chrome postcard published by H. S. Crocker Co. - ca 1950
But my very favorite place to have lunch was at Moar's Cafeteria, just a few steps away and across the street from
Woolworths at 33 Powell Street. It was my favorite for two reasons; you could order a variety of individual dishes, like
tapas I discovered forty years later in Spain (
link below), cereal, pasta, vegetables, meats, desserts, etc. It was totally different from eating at home where the whole meal was set with no substitutions. My absolutely favorite items were beef liver with grilled onions, sweet peas and mashed potatoes. It was what I ordered almost every time I went. The second reason was the
mosaic murals by
Beniamino "Benny" Bufano in the cafeteria.
Benny Bufano, mosaic murals - August 19, 1970
Moar’s Cafeteria
Photo: Bill Young, San Francisco Chronicle
I could have spent the whole day looking at them while I let my lunch get cold but my father wouldn't let me; they were like no works of art I had ever seen and the detail on them was
mesmerizing. By this time I was deep into
archeology and was familiar with
Ancient Roman art with its mosaic tradition, such as the
Judgment of Paris from the Greek legend, made of marble, limestone and glass tesserae tiles in the Atrium House triclinium in Antioch (115–150 AD.). I was later to use this theme for one of my works in an exhibition (
link below).
Bufano created the large murals for Moar's Cafeteria in 1950, however, they were removed in the 1970s for
BART construction (what a huge mistake, the removal and BART).
Benny Bufano, Moar’s Cafeteria - April 11, 1950
Beniamino Bufano was born in
San Fele,
Italy, on October 15, 1890. He came to the United States in 1901 with his mother and 11 or 16 siblings; Bufano was quoted as saying that he was one of 15 children. The date of his birth is also uncertain.
Shortly after the United States entered
World War I in 1917, Bufano accidentally cut off half of his right index finger. He decided to mail the "trigger finger" to President
Woodrow Wilson as a protest against the war. He allowed a legend to develop that he had intentionally severed the finger for this purpose.
In 1917 he returned to California and rented a studio in Pasadena,
where he sculpted portrait heads and took philosophy classes. But he decided
San Francisco was where he most wanted to live, and it became his home base for the rest of his life. There is an excellent video of his work with just music, no dialogue (
link below).
Beniamino Bufano taught at the
California College of Arts & Crafts and continued to create art and to be seen as a colorful local
character until his death from heart disease in 1970. In his will he
disinherited his daughter Aloha M. Bufano-Jones (1918–1991) and did not
mention his son Erskine Scott Bufano, leaving everything to an entity he
and patron friends had established called the Bufano Society of the
Arts. Erskine successfully contested the will and became the head of the society. Erskine died in 2010. Bufano is buried at
Holy Cross Cemetery in
Colma, California.
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