20 Cosmo Place
Lower Nob Hill/Tenderloin
This unassuming building has been providing fine drinks, food and happiness to San Francisco’s since 1951.
Trader Vic’s opened in Cosmo Alley in 1951. The restaurant was built from an old corrugated parking garage. Passing along the narrow walk way through a tropical garden, customers entered the rustic shed.
This photograph, from the archives of the San Francisco Chronicle (with no caption or story) must show the very beginnings of the place, if not the construction for its opening.
While I spent fond nights there eating Pu pu Platters and downing Trader Vic’s famous Mai Tai’s I never took photographs, so we will have to rely on old photographs for pictures of the interior.
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While famous for so many things Trader Vic’s was the first restaurant to serve Queen Elizabeth II. Until her visit with the Reagan’s in 1983 she had never eaten in a restaurant. Sadly Trader Vic’s closed in 1994.
Victor Bergeron, Trader Vic, was also a sculptor and has two sculptures in Golden Gate Park that you can read about here.
Trader Vic’s was replaced with Le Colonial. A fabulous French Vietnamese Restaurant.
San Francisco has so very many hidden treasures, Cosmo Place is no different, who knew you would find so much San Francisco history down an alley such as this.
