Frank "Bud" Spenger, Jr. and his wife Milly, watched a
football game last Sunday in a cocktail lounge Bud designed years ago. The
ceiling above was covered with corks gathered from old fishing nets --
chestnut colored rings pitted from years of trolling the waters of the
Sacramento River. It is one part of a decor that can be found nowhere but at
Spenger's Fish Grotto, treasures accumulated by the century-old business.
Beyond the bar there is a busy dining
room walled with planks from schooners that once sailed the seas -- walls
adorned with trophy fish, some of which, it is said, no longer inhabit the
ocean. Just beyond the dining room is a fish market where customers
stand in line to purchase red snapper and baas, scallop and oysters.
The market is so popular that many people come from as far away as San Jose
to buy quarts of clam chowder, deviled crab and poached salmon. Yet,
few know that this location is where, in 1890, Bavarian immigrant Johann
Spenger built a house.
According to Johann's grandson Bud,
"Grandpa came here in 1865 and worked as a fisherman on the Day. He came
here to Berkeley and built the pointed house you can see from the front.
Well, that's his home.
"On the northside, he had a little
lean-to where my father, who was a commercial fisherman, would leave a lot
of fish for Grandpa. And he had a little kind of shelf-like deal there and
he sold fish to the public. He had a sign out front with a stick and a piece
of newspaper. And when the newspaper was dangling in the westerly wind, we
had fish, and the people would come down and he'd wrap it up in newspaper
and sell it. That's how he started the business."
Crowds return,
reminisce
From that humble beginning the
institution known as Spenger's Fish Grotto became, for many years, one of
the nation's top grossing restaurants. Patronage of Berkeley's oldest
restaurant began to decline in the late '80s. But when news circulated this
year that Spenger's was scheduled to close Sept. 30, flocks of people
returned. In fact Bob Schafer, a union bartender who has poured drinks at
the Spenger's bar for 25 years, said the last month or so has been "like
when I started working here. It's been screaming."
On the weekends there are long lines
of people waiting their turn to be seated at the restaurant many thought
would always be part of their lives. Take Phil Dodd for instance: he
began dining at Spenger's while in the Navy in 1944. After his discharge in
October of '46, Dodd and his wife, "a Berkeley girl," bought a house on
Eighth Street. The couple went on to have four children and the Dodd
brought them to Spenger's once a week.
"Later I had a job where I traveled
all around the United States," Dodd said. "Once a month I was allowed to fly
home." Twelve times a year, Dodd would fly into San Francisco airport and be
shuttled across the Bay by a helicopter service provided by the airlines
that landed near the spot where automobiles now exit from I-80. Dodd's wife
and kids would race up to greet him as he stepped out of the craft, hugging
and kissing their dad. Then the entire family would walk away to spend the
homecoming together. And they went to Spenger's for dinner.
Closure too hard to
believe
Ask any of the regulars at Spenger's
and they will have stories to tell. They'll tell you how Spenger's used to
flood during high water, back when the front door opened up to the mudflats.
The older ones will tell you about Strawberry Creek and how it used to run
down what is now University Avenue, and about fog so thick people couldn't
see across the streets.
Randolph Smith, a patron since the
'50s, had a story to tell about Frank Spenger Sr. "I borrowed money from him
to buy my first boat," Smith recalled. A professional diver since 1947,
Smith said Spenger "was sittin' down there at the end of the counter" when
he asked for the loan. "The old man took my hand and felt if like this," he
explained, rubbing this reporter's hand, checking for calluses. "Then he
said, 'I'll be right back.' He came back with a Safeway bag with money in
it," that Smith used to purchase his boat.
"If the old man knew ya, he'd
say 'go order a meal. I'll pay for it.'" Smith said. "Then you'd go order a
meal and when it came, he'd come sit down. And if that meal wasn't what he
thought it should be, BINGO! back into the kitchen that old man went. Yeah.
He was a trippy guy."
Then there's Art Patterson, "I'm as
old as the trees but my parents brought me here when I was 6 years old," he
said. "And my earliest memories of this place are the same that I have now:
Every time I come here I see something that I've never seen before.
"My mother, father, brother and myself
used to come here from Vallejo," Patterson recalled. "At that time, of
course, to come down here was a significant part of the family budget. I
think my dad made about $25 a week then, and to come here and to spend money
for the family. . . We had to be good kids or we didn't come."
Patterson can't believe Spenger's
would ever be closed down. "This history doesn't exist anywhere else," he
said. "To prove it, all you have to do is just walk into any room in this
building and look at any wall. If you look around you'll find planks that
are two inches thick and twelve inches wide. Just go over there and just
touch one. You'll get a sense of something that you cannot find in buildings
today. It's just too priceless. Just LOOK at all this stuff!"
Fish market to
restaurant
Frank Spenger Jr., explained that many
of the walls are made of teak, some "from the battleship Maryland and two
cruisers -- the Lurline and the Harvard, I think -- that used to cruise out
of Frisco. I gathered the wood from throughout the country," he said. "I did
it with the help of some employees. All the artifacts are originals. Same
thing with the portholes."
"This place should be available to all
the school kids because they will never see anything like this," Patterson
said with enthusiasm. "This whole building is a history of the west.
"Besides," he continued, "the dinners
are very nice."
Spenger's Fish Grotto is, after all, a
restaurant and a fish market. But how did it evolve from a lean-to with
fresh fish wrapped in newspaper into a world famous restaurant? Well,
according to Spenger Jr., by the '20s "they stopped us from fishing locally"
and the market bought fish from wholesalers. In 1933, "we started the
restaurant because Dad wanted a liquor License. In order to have one you had
to have a bonafide restaurant. It went on from there."
Now diners choose from an array of
menu items that include salmon, Mahi Mahi, halibut, bass, snapper, sole,
orange roughy, trout, and kippered cod; one can order meals that are
broiled, baked, poached and fried, steamed, creamed, and curried. There are
casseroles, omelets, and dishes served Kirkpatrick, Newberry, Florentine,
Rockefeller and au gratin. Patrons dine on crab served 10 different ways,
and feast on mussels, oysters, lobster and prawns. And despite reports from
other newspapers, they also serve pasta, fresh vegetables and salads.
But Art Patterson's favorite dish is
called a Pacifica. "It's usually a breakfast dish and you won't always find
it on the menu," he said with a smile, "but they serve it all the time. It's
made with crab and spinach and eggs. And man, is it ever good."
Spenger: 'We want to
stay open'
Despite the scheduled closing of
Spenger's Fish Grotto Sept. 30, and reports published recently suggesting a
number of different scenarios for the landmark -- all of which would result
in the closing of the restaurant -- it appears Frank "Bud" Spenger, Jr.
wants to try to keep the business his family built open.
One publication's interview with a
Berkeley official suggested the site might be purchased by Robert Redford's
Sundance Theaters, while other reports have speculated about the building
being razed, turned into shops, upscale apartments, a multi-leveled parking
lot and more.
Yet in an interview Sunday, Spenger
said that after Sept. 30, "we're going to re-open." Despite the fact that
the 83-year-old restaurateur gets "a little tired" since he suffered a
stroke, he said "We're trying to sign a lease with some other outfit. So we
want to stay open.
__________
Carter, James. "Grotto's
Longtime Patrons Have Fond Memories: News of
Pending Closure Brings Crowds Back to Spenger's." Berkeley
Voice. Thursday,
September 10, 1998. pp. 1, 12.