Elbow-to-elbow with San Francisco's Basques - Basque hotels and restaurants in San Francisco

Elbow-to-elbow with San Francisco's Basques Emigrants themselves, the Basques have always understood a traveler's needs: a good meal, a night's rest, and fellowship. And since the turn of the century, that's just what San Francisco's Basque hotels and restaurants have provided--for adventurous tourists as well as sheepherders from Basque enclaves in the inland west and the Basque regions of southwestern France and northwestern Spain.

Today, Basque restaurants near Broadway and Stockton Street appeal to students, artists, and other penny-wise diners, who gather at the long tables for hearty, family-style meals. In the last 10 years, though, the restaurants' numbers have dwindled from seven to three.

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But one thing has remained: the good value. All three have fixed-price menus, which include soup, two entrees, salad, dessert, and coffee--for $10.50 to $13. (Wine is usually extra.)

Basque food here is, like the community, predominantly from the French side of the Pyrenees. The Spanish Basques traveled farther north to Idaho; Nevada Basques are a mixture of the two.

Although Basques used to gather in the Broadway-Stockton area, ethnic events now tend to focus around the eight-year-old Basque Cultural Center, in South San Francisco. Its restaurant serves meals daily except Mondays, and the public is welcome at other activities as well.

Cultural center in South San Francisco:

language lessons to lamb stew

Activities at the cultural center (599 Railroad Avenue) may be geared primarily to Basques, but the public is welcome to stop by from 11:30 A.M. to 11:30 P.M. Tuesdays through Fridays, 4 to 11:30 weekends.

Lessons in the Basque language (Euskara) are offered Mondays and Wednesdays. Tuesdays, paleta tournaments are held from 7 to 9; this fast-paced 40-point game is similar to racquetball. The library contains bilingual encyclopedias (French-Euskara and Spanish-Euskara) and books by and about Basque luminaries.

A drum and bugle corps, a choir, and a dance group perform at Basque picnics around the West. From 3 to 7:30 on September 22, they'll be here at a barbecue, along with a French handball team. A Basque rock band will play from 8 P.M. to 1 A.M. Admission is free; dinners cost $16, $6 ages 12 and under.

You may hear waiters banter or burst into song in Euskara as you enjoy a five-course meal ($11.75 to $13.50) in the large, airy restaurant, elegant with linen tablecloths. The menu changes daily, with selections like leek and potato soup, roast chicken, lamb stew, and veal cordon bleu.

Dishes a la carte ($10.50 to $16, with soup and salad) include Pernod-flambeed prawns or wine-stewed rabbit. End with traditional cream-filled Basque cake ($2.50). Lunch entrees cost $6 to $9.50 a la carte; try the spicy pork sausage.

After about 4 on Sundays, you can watch games of mus, a four-card game like poker, or one of the four kinds of pelota (a form of handball) in the nearby courts.

The restaurant is open from 11:30 to 2:30 and 5:30 to 9:30 Tuesdays through Fridays, 5:30 to 9:30 Saturdays, and 5 to 9 Sundays. Call (415) 583-8091 for directions and reservations.

Simple and hearty: boarding-house fare in San Francisco's North Beach

These restaurants' reasonable prices and roll-up-your-sleeves atmosphere make them good places for family dining (even if the prices have risen from the 1908 tab of 30 cents for soup, salad, two entrees, ice cream, and coffee). We list cost of the fixed-price dinner.

Des Alpes, 732 Broadway; (415) 391-4249. Hours are 5 to 10 Tuesdays through Saturdays, 5 to 9:30 Sundays; $10.50.

Friday's steamed clams with rice, sliced filet mignon, and green bean salad are especially popular at this boarding house, which has served Basque food since the '20s.

Paleta paddles and pastoral scenes hang over the dining room's brown-checked tables. Up front, dollar bills stuck on the ceiling are successful wagers from a drinking game.

Basque Hotel and Restaurant, 15 Romolo Place (off Broadway between Columbus Avenue and Kearny Street); 788-9404. Hours are 5 to 9:30 daily except Mondays, till 10 Fridays and Saturdays; $10.50.

For the last 30 years, diners have ladled out vegetable soup and passed platters of trout or roast lamb in this quiet dining room just a half-block from Broadway's flesh hawkers and flashing signs. At long tables decorated in the red, white, and green of the Basque flag, you can try powerful picon punch, then the daily special--Tuesday's is New York steak or duck confit, and chicken Basque (baked in a tomato sauce with onions, bell peppers, and herbs). Adventurous diners can even sample Basque favorites such as sweetbreads (Thursdays) and oxtail stew (Saturdays).

The Obrero, 1208 Stockton Street; 989-3960. Open daily; $13.

Squeezed between a Chinese butcher and a grocery heaped with bok choy and cabbage, a white-and-green door leads to this upstairs restaurant. In the dining room, a bright mural features ruddy-faced women and cavorting sheep. There's a homey jumble of books and records, as well as a stuffed parrot.