847 Montgomery St

Eight hundred forty-seven Montgomery Street occupies a classic brick building that once housed the notorious Frisco Dance Hall, a center of life in the city’s rough Barbary Coast district. In nineteen thirty-four, an Italian cook named Ernie Carlesso opened a cafe here called Il Trovatore, which eventually became known simply as Ernie’s. By the nineteen fifties, brothers Victor and Roland Gotti had transformed the space into a destination of extreme luxury, decorating the interior with maroon silk brocade, crystal chandeliers, and heavy drapery.