San Francisco's Crystal Palace Market, at 8th and Market, was one of Anchor's best post-Prohibition accounts. It began as the Emporium Public Market, and is remembered fondly by old-timers as San Francisco's first and most colorful shopping mall. In August 1959, the Crystal Palace finally closed its doors forever, but not before playing a pivotal role in a series of events that would one day save San Francisco's favorite beer!

Without a Crystal Palace, there might never have been an Old Spaghetti Factory, and without an Old Spaghetti Factory, perhaps no Anchor Steam today! Fritz Maytag recalls, "Fred Kuh once told me that he had come out from Chicago to visit a friend who took him to the Crystal Palace Market, a well known market in San Francisco, a European-style market with stalls and individual purveyors of all sorts of things. He was overwhelmed by the richness, and the European feeling that food was celebrated, the individual purveyors were proud to be there, and there was a fabulous variety, the way there would be in Italy. They went to the little bar there in the grocery store, and had a glass of Anchor Steam beer. His friend told him that this was the local beer. Fred told me that he vowed right there that someday he would come to San Francisco, open a restaurant, and serve Anchor Steam Beer. And he did. Very soon afterward he opened the Old Spaghetti Factory, which was a charming, low-key place. They had pasta of all kinds. It was the kind of place you’d go with a lot of friends, have a very relaxed meal, very reasonably priced, jug wine, that sort of thing. He must have had 200 chairs and every single one was different. It was a hodgepodge, had a charming jumbled quality, with oddball things on the wall. I was a regular at the Old Spaghetti Factory in the summer of 1965. It was unique, just unique."