Sunday, July 29, 2012

Family Recipe Book - Salad Eleanor by Joseph A. Beyl

My Gr Grandfather Joseph A. Beyl was a chef. He came to America from Germany in 1912. His father, Anton, was a baker in, what I've been told was a storybook village, Obernai, not far from Strasbourg.

Joseph worked in the bakery with his father until he was 15 when he left for America. Shortly after he arrived in the U.S. he got a job in Manhattan's Hotel Astor as a baker's assistant. After a year there he took a train to Philadelphia, where the chef at the Bellevue Stratford signed him on as a kitchen helper. After that he went to Minneapolis where he also worked in a hotel kitchen...then finally on to San Francisco when he was 19 years old. He went to work for the St. Francis Hotel as a chef commis and his mentor Victor Hirtzler. By 1928 Joseph was worked as a chef at the Hotel Californian is Fresno, CA. In 1930 he became the chef at the prestigious Alexander Hamilton Hotel in San Francisco, CA.

A few years ago my mother gave me a small stack of photos and in those photos was a thin, brittle recipe card. The recipe "Salad Eleanor" by Joseph A. Beyl, Sea Wolf Restaurant. It was the first time I'd seen a photo of my Gr Grandfather. I've seen seen a few more...but the photo of Joseph in his chef's hat is my favorite.


1 comment:

  1. I just read a paper about the current French First Lady Valerie T. and the diary she is writing. It is said that her model is Eleanor Roosevelt, the famous First American Lady from 1933 to 1945.
    Eleanor ...
    It reminded me that when I first time read this blog, I wondered, and checked, if "Salad Eleanor" is a chef's classic? It doesn't seem so!
    Joseph must have named his special salad in honor of a famous guest he served in one of the restaurants he was the chef, a lady called Eleanor, who requested for her preferate salad ...
    May be she was the extraordinary Anna Eleanor Roosevelt ...?

    freerob, french genealogist, accordeonist, engineer

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