In 1886, Italian cuisine didn’t yet exist and restaurants in the working-class immigrant neighborhood catered towards provincial specialties. At Fior, that meant Northern Italian dishes that nodded to its founders’ Ligurian and Tuscan origins: veal scaloppine, risotto with clams, tortellini Bologna, each sold for less than 15 cents a pop.
Fior D’Italia was one of several regional Italian restaurants that cropped up in North Beach at the end of the 19th century. For Genoese food like cioppin (now cioppino), there was Bazzuro’s. Campi served Italian-Swiss cuisine, Sanguinetti’s food from Southern Italy. To Coppa’s, artists and bohemians flocked for the Turinese food of chef Giuseppe Coppa.
