The "Emperor Norton" Disappeared from the Ghirardelli Menu a Decade Earlier Than Believed
But the Sundae Itself Remained on the Menu — Under a Different Name — For Another 20-Plus Years
In 2004, Cammy Blackstone — then a morning host on San Francisco radio station KFRC — noticed that the Emperor Norton Sundae had disappeared from the menu at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square.
Blackstone mentioned this to San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik, and Garchik wrote it up, sparking what became that year's movement to name the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge after the Emperor.
In the years since then, it typically has been reported that the Emperor Norton Sundae was taken off the menu of the Ghirardelli Square shop in 2004.
But, I always have pointed out that 2004 is when someone noticed the absence and, with the help of a well-placed friend, spread the news to the San Francisco masses — the removal itself could have happened earlier.
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Here's something new...
A search on Google finds blog mentions and Yelp reviews, dating back as far as 2009, of a "Domingo Sundae” at the Ghirardelli Square shop. Contemporaneous photos and descriptions make it clear that the Domingo basically was an Emperor Norton Sundae.
On 22 September 2000, the San Francisco Examiner published a piece by metro reporter Rachel Gordon, looking at the city's great food spots through the lens of how she first experienced them as a kid when her family moved to San Francisco from Chicago in 1969.
Gordon writes [emphases mine]:
Excerpt from Rachel Gordon, "Best eating ensconced in neighborhoods," San Francisco Examiner, 22 September 2000, p. 78. Source: Newspapers dot com
When we were really living it up, my family would hop on a Hyde Street cable car Friday nights for a ride through Russian Hill down to Ghirardelli Square. It was an era — pre lawsuit frenzy — when riders still helped the gripmen turn around the cable cars at the end of the line.
We'd pass the street artists, the Ruth Asawa mermaid fountain and head straight for the chocolate factory. I always went for the biggest sundae, the Emperor Norton, that had two scoops of vanilla ice cream, bananas, whipped cream, hot fudge, walnuts and cherries. All that for $1.35. Today, the same sundae, renamed after Domingo Ghirardelli, who founded the chocolate factory in 1853, costs $6.78 with tax.
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It appears that the Emperor Norton Sundae itself continued to be offered for at least a couple of decades after the name was changed — there are mentions of the Domingo Sundae being introduced at Disney California Adventure in 2019.
But, when did the name change take place? In recent days, we’ve uncovered a couple of Ghirardelli menus from the 1990s. Based on these menus, the Emperor Norton Sundae was rebranded as the Domingo Ghirardelli Sundae sometime between 1990 and 1996.
Here's the description of the Emperor Norton from the August 1984 menu:
Goblet ringed with bananas and cherries. Two big scoops of vanilla ice cream. Hot Fudge Sauce and whipped cream. Topped with nuts.
By the time of the menu was printed in July 1990, here's how the Emperor Norton description appeared:
Here sits two noble scoops of vanilla ice cream in a throne of hot fudge sauce with bananas towering from all sides...robed with whipped cream and crowned with almonds, chocolate chips and a cherry.
Here's the description of the Domingo Ghirardelli Sundae from the September 1996 menu. It’s an almost verbatim copy of the Emperor Norton description from 1990:
Here sits two noble scoops of vanilla ice cream in a throne of hot fudge sauce with bananas towering from all sides...robed with whipped cream and crowned with nuts and a cherry.
And, here’s that 1996 menu, with the Domingo third in the list of Nob Hill Sundaes but no mention of Emperor Norton:
From Ghirardelli menu, September 1996. Source: Marilyn B. Feingold Menu Collection, Johnson & Wales University (page 1 in the pdf available for download here). © Ghirardelli
We can see here that the name of the Emperor Norton Sundae had been changed by September 1996 — at least eight years before the Chronicle took note in 2004.
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For a selection of vintage Ghirardelli menus and ephemera from the 1960s to 1980s showing the Emperor Norton Sundae, see our May 2016 article here.
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