By Tuulia Koponen
Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Inside it looks like a fancy Italian inspired seafood restaurant located in Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
However, the founders and original occupants of the building Tarantino’s Restaurant are far from being fancy, Italian and a restaurant.
“The building originally comes from the 1920s-30s when it was a crab merchant’s union hall,” general manager Robert Wilson said. “When it became a crab restaurant, Irish [founders John McAteer and Patrick Sweeney] bought it.”
The two founders came from old San Francisco families and met through political connections with Sweeney being a California senator and McAteer running for governor of California at the time.
Having funds to run a restaurant and connections with the city, McAteer and Sweeney founded the restaurant in 1947. In order for it to fit into Fisherman’s Wharf, they knew it needed an Italian name.
And so they named it Tarantino’s after the crab merchant who owned the crab’s restaurant before them. The two founders then came up with the idea to tie in the fisherman trade of the time.
“Most of the trade at the time was from local people,” Wilson said. “Not many tourists came to the area since it was pretty ugly with gas tanks and factories making motors for boats.”
As a working class part of town, only native San Franciscans came to the restaurant for fresh seafood until the mid 1960s-70s when the residential areas and factories were knocked down and it became tourist-friendly.
“In the [early] 50s, the lower deck was added on and year-by-year they just kept renovating and expanding in order to attract tourists,” Wilson said. “The peak of business went up and down from the 50s on due to earthquakes and such.”
The same year the restaurant was founded, McAteer’s life was cut short one night at a private gentlemen’s club, the Bohemian Club, in San Francisco.
“He died of a heart attack,” Wilson said. “From then on the restaurant was owned by the Sweeney’s and then the McAteer’s who currently own the restaurant.”
All in all, Tarantino’s Restaurant has grown from its humble beginnings and is now one of many restaurants to dine in in the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco with their special secret being its Irish founders.
Four members of The Sidekick staff and adviser Chase Wofford and KCBY adviser Irma Kennedy traveled to the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention in San Francisco on April 25-28.
