Jack's

Its French proprietor, George Voges, christened the restaurant “Jack’s” as a nod to a frontier city in the making. Rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake, Jack’s endured as one of San Francisco’s most important civic dining rooms. In the early 1900s, mayors and planners met upstairs to debate the city’s reconstruction, sketching Market Street and the Civic Center over seafood and martinis. The decision to bid for the 1915 World’s Fair was sealed here. Mayor Joseph Alioto later made Jack’s his unofficial office, finalizing appointments over rounds at the bar. Real estate deals, newspaper mergers, and shipping contracts were signed on cocktail napkins, while early conversations around the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid unfolded long before they reached City Hall.