"We Season Our Garlic With Food®"

Garlic is our passion. When in San Francisco, all you have to do is "follow your nose" and it will lead you to one of The-City-By-The-Bay's most unique and entertaining dining experiences... The Stinking Rose: A Garlic Restaurant.

Garlic is known universally as "the stinking rose", the term reportedly going back to Greek and Roman times. But why? The "stinking" part is obvious, but why "rose"? Garlic is an allium which is part of the Liliaceae family. Garlic is closer to a lily than a rose. So what is the origin of the name? Unfortunately there is no clear answer to this question.

In their excellent book Garlic: Nature's Original Remedy Stephen Fulder and John Blackwood discuss the issue. The ancient Greek name for garlic was scorodon. According to Fulder and Blackwood, French physician Henri Leclerc derived this from skaion rodon which he translated as rose puante, or "stinking rose". This still doesn't explain why garlic should be considered a rose. One possibility is that if looked at from underneath a bulb of garlic does slightly resemble a white rose.

Dracula and Garlic
The most famous of all garlic folklore is its association with vampires. This was popularised in the West by Bram Stoker in the classic gothic novel, Dracula. In Dracula, van Helsing uses garlic to protect Lucy by placing it in her room and around her neck.

Why Does Garlic Repel Vampires?
The reputation of garlic as a vampire repellent goes back long before Stoker's relatively recent gothic creation. Why should this be? It's true that garlic has long been associated with health and life in general, however why should it ward off vampires rather than all undead? There are many competing theories as to the origin of the vampire story. Many have to do with disease.

A recent theory tries to associate vampirism with rabies. This works well in general however it fails to explain convincingly the position of garlic in the myth. Instead it relies on the idea of rabies sufferers becoming fixated on the smell of garlic - an idea that could just as likely apply to the smell of coffee, not a known anti-vampire tool!

Another theory is that vampirism can be seen as symbolic of mosquito bites - and garlic is known in folklore as a natural mosquito repellent. Mosquitoes suck blood and in doing so spread disease. So do vampires. Some of the symptoms of malaria - exhaustion, fever, anemia - are reminiscent of the reputed effects of being bitten by a vampire without being totally drained or turned. Garlic is a known insect repellent which reportedly works well against mosquitoes. This would fit well with the vampire folklore and gothic fiction.

Open Daily 11:00am - 11:00pm