By Joseph Temple

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, stars like Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant lit up the marquees at theaters across the country, becoming household names while generating millions of dollars for studios such as RKO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Columbia, MGM and Universal.  But where did all of these movie icons go to eat after the film stopped rolling and the spotlights were shut off?  In the city of Los Angeles, there certainly was no shortage of first-class restaurants that catered to stars of the studio era.  And below are seven examples that will take you back in time to an of era of continental-style fine dining, supper clubs and curved leather booths.  Enjoy!

Special thanks to the Los Angeles Public Library for providing most of the images for this posting.

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Instantly recognizable for its signature derby hat logo and the accompanying motto “Eat in the Hat,” this chain became synonymous with Hollywood’s Golden Age.  With the first location opening its doors in 1926, the most famous of the Brown Derby restaurants became the one on Vine Street where its walls were covered in framed 8 by 10 inch caricatures of various celebrities.    Studio moguls Harry Cohn and Jack Warner both had permanent reserved seats for years while booth #54 became the spot where Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard.  Back then, if you ever wanted to see a celebrity in the flesh, the Brown Derby was the place to go.
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(Left) The Brown Derby Restaurant near the famous Hollywood and Vine intersection. (Center) Actress Rita Hayworth and friend Evelyn Keyes dining at the Brown Derby, 1940. (Right) A 1948 menu from the Brown Derby. (click to enlarge all)

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Driving down Sunset Boulevard in 1938, there was no way you could miss seeing a 24-foot neon sign of Beryl Wallace at the famous Earl Carroll Theatre where the slogan was “Thru These Portals Pass The Most Beautiful Girls In The World.”  A 1,000-seat supper club-theater, numerous stars that included Tyrone Power, Errol Flyn and Betty Grable lined up to see a lavish show that featured beautiful chorus girls singing on a 60-foot-wide double revolving stage and staircase built at a cost of approximately $500,000 ($8 million in today’s dollars).
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(Left) Chorus girls performing. (Center) Seating area and stage. (Right) Plaques of celebrity signatures outside the Earl Carroll Theater and Restaurant. (click to enlarge all)

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On Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, flamboyant restaurateur Harry Gerguson assumed the identity of “Prince” Michael Romanoff, heir to Czarist Russian royalty during the time he owned Romanoff’s, one of the most posh places to eat for A-list celebrities.  In a town where everyone pretends to be somebody they’re not, its almost fitting that this restaurant, with its swank floor plan and larger than life owner, would explode in popularity.  Over the years, hundreds of famous people would dine here, including a young aspiring chef named Julia Child who loved one of the restaurant’s signatures dishes – strawberries Romanoff!
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(Left) Interior dining area (Center) Actress Barbara Stanwyck at Romanoff’s.
(Right) Romanoff’s Menu. (click to enlarge all)

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During the darkest days of the Great Depression, an immigrant from Northern Italy named Alexander Perino opened a fine-dining restaurant that ended up catering not only to celebrities but future Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.  Serving such renown dishes as veal scallopini, crepes suzette and strawberry Italienne, Perino’s would also earn a reputation as a mafia hangout, something its owner may have fostered by allowing mobster scenes for Hollywood movies to be filmed inside his restaurant.
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(Left) Owner Alexander Perino on the phone. (Center) Fashion show and luncheon at Perino’s.
(Right) President Richard Nixon & Henry Kissinger at Perino’s. (click to enlarge all)

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While many eateries have come and gone in the city of Los Angeles, Musso & Frank Grill has had the distinction for many years of being Hollywood’s oldest restaurant.  Originally founded in 1919, it eventually became the epicenter for writers in Tinseltown, being conveniently located next to the office building for the Writers Guild of America for many years.  With its world-famous food and martinis, diners have included William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charlie Chaplin who lunched there daily.

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Located on the Sunset Strip, Ciro’s was the most popular restaurant/club for many years as the nightlife in Los Angeles exploded.  “The legend is that after a big premiere, a star’s social position for the year is determined by his table at Ciro’s” boasted its owner Herman Hover.   With chic silk walls and a red ceiling, legend has it that this hotspot played a key role in the courtship of Ava Gardner and Howard Duff as well as Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan.

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(Left) Ronald Reagan and Dean Martin dining at Ciro’s. (Center & Right) Menu and Wine List.
(click to enlarge all)

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For almost sixty years, this legendary West Hollywood restaurant entertained many distinguished guests with its great food and elegant ambiance.  Future President Ronald Reagan would propose to Nancy Davis at a booth that is now on display at his presidential library in Simi Valley.  Elizabeth Taylor loved Chasen’s world-famous chili so much that she had buckets of it flown in to Rome where she was filming Cleopatra.  And it was here where director Alfred Hitchcock learned about American cuisine and cocktails at his signature booth.
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(Left) The booth where President Reagan proposed to Nancy Reagan. (Center & Right) Waiting Room and Exterior of Chasen’s before its demolition in 1999. (click to enlarge all)

With branches in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Chula Vista, La Jolla & Pasadena, the International Wine & Food Society has a strong presence across Southern California.

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By Taro Taylor from Sydney, Australia (Splash Drip) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Question: I was at a friend’s house and saw that he had a bottle of 1998 Pouilly Fuisse Bouchard Pere in his wine console so I decided to take a few pics with my cell phone camera.  Is it still drinkable?  I don’t know what temperature he keeps his house or the humidity levels.  Is there some sort of rule of thumb on when a bottle turns into vinegar?

Answer: I would open this wine as soon as possible regardless of storage. Could still be alive as a softer Chardonnay showing a deeper yellow colour with still some regional aged spicy smoky nut character.  However, could also be an oxidizing or maderizing bottle. Check it out now as it won’t improve. Suggest you maybe have some soft runny mature French cheese like Epoisses or Soumaintrain ready to match with it. Bouchard Pere is a top firm since 1731 with large prime vineyard holdings but this wine uses purchased grapes from the more southerly Maconnais region of Burgundy with the difficult 1998 vintage conditions including hail, frost and even mildew. There is no strict rule of thumb of when a wine turns to vinegar. Dry reds usually last longer than dry whites. Chardonnay grown in the top vineyards proven to provide underlying structure to their wines like Corton Charlemagne & Meursault Perrieres age and develop consistently for the longest period – providing you can avoid the recent curse of premox (premature oxidation)! Hopefully enjoy.

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Really like those colourful tomatoes with their healthy heart friendly antioxidant lycopene properties. Lots of varieties out there but at grocery stores for most of the year we see only the new breed of hard flavourless varieties that ship well. Frustration has compelled many of us to now grow our own from seeds in the backyard. This time of year during summer the farmer markets are full of heirloom tomatoes in their many glorious shapes and colours. The small orange Sungold and SunSugar  cherry tomatoes are very sweet and most popular. Green are interesting particularly the Green Zebra with their intense tarter zippy energy. Japanese Black Trifele is dark red and rich. Yellow Brandywine are usually large softer and yellow.  So many varieties to try and mix and match in pursuit of the perfect tomato. My preference still is Black Krim which always seems to be ripe enough – so juicy, sweet, and almost smoky.

Do you seek out heirloom tomatoes? What is your preferred variety?

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By Joseph Temple

On Sunday morning, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area and the surrounding region, injuring hundreds of people and leaving thousands without water and electricity.  There have thankfully been no deaths due to this natural disaster, but an area hit particularly hard is Napa, home to a $13 billion dollar a year wine industry.  According to one report, 33 buildings have been declared unsafe to enter with another 600 properties experiencing water and sewage problems.  The biggest earthquake to hit the Northern California since 1989, the total economic damage is estimated to be in the billions.

For anyone living in the areas affected by this earthquake, two Red Cross evacuation centers are open to those in need – one at the Crosswalk Community Church in Napa at 2590 First Street and another at the Florence Douglas Center at 333 Amador Street in Vallejo.  For those in the wine industry, you can visit Napaearthquake.com, where numerous individuals have offered their help and assistance.

At the International Wine & Food Society, our best wishes go out to the people of the Golden State.  And if history is any indication, we are confident the region will only emerge stronger from this disaster.

One hundred and eight years ago, the epicenter of California’s wine industry was not in the vineyards of Napa or Sonoma, but in the city of San Francisco. With its close proximity to both railroad lines and shipping routes, the Bay Area became an important hub during a time when merchants were in control of both production and distribution.  Firmly entrenched in the city was the powerful California Wine Association (CWA), which controlled nearly 75% of the market as  “the distinction between winegrower and wine merchant was not sharply drawn.”  According to  historian Thomas Pinney, “their [the CWA’s] produce was sent to central cellars in San Francisco where the wines were stored, blended to a uniform standard, bottled, and then shipped for sale … as a monopoly, or rather, near-monopoly, it belonged to the rapacious business style of the late nineteenth century, and, no doubt, if the full record could be known it would show a long tale of sharp practices and dubious moves.”

However, this dominant organization would be rendered helpless on April 18, 1906, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco to its core. With over 28,000 buildings destroyed, 3,000 deaths and half the city left homeless, it is to this day one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

And while some people tried to save their wine from the destruction, in some cases, it was wine that was saving them.

Silent film documenting the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Courtesy: Prelinger Archives

With fires spreading throughout the Bay Area and the water supply shut off due to the intense shaking that ruptured nearly 30,000 city pipes, wine became an important weapon to combat the roaring flames.  Luckily, thousands of recent immigrants who successfully fought against statewide prohibition, had homemade wine operations that proved useful in saving San Francisco from total ruin.  “In those days, many Italian immigrants fermented wine in their basement and there are stories of old-timers getting them out and pouring them on the fire,” declared one resident.

At CWA headquarters, efforts were made to salvage whatever they could of its enormous stockpile.  Using a city-owned fire engine, a million and a half gallons of wine was pumped out from one of their still burning cellars and placed into a barge where it was then distilled into brandy.  Still, the CWA lost approximately 10,000,000 gallons due to the earthquake, while its competitor, the Italian Swiss Colony (a company also located in the area) lost over 12,000,000 gallons and roughly $3,500,000 (over $88,000,000 in today’s dollars) in damages to their building and the equipment inside it.

Newspaper articles reporting on the disaster.
Credit: California Digital Newspaper Collection.

In the aftermath of this devastating disaster, the wine industry learned a painful lesson on the dangers of centralization.  W. Blake Grey of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, “With their headquarters and most of their wine destroyed, wineries moved their operation closer to the grapes, and thus what we now think of as Wine Country was also changed forever.”  Remarkably, after just a few years of restructuring, the California wine industry successfully rebounded from this devastating loss.

Whether an earthquake, phylloxera, numerous droughts, two economic depressions or thirteen painful years of prohibition, the Golden State and its wine have clearly faced numerous challenges over the past century.  Yet after each of these catastrophic events, California fights back, becoming an undisputed leader around the globe for quality wine.  If history is any indication of the resilience of Californians and their wine industry, they are sure to overcome this most recent devastation and maintain their world class designation.

Question: Would you share your top 10 toasts? I could also use one for a rehearsal dinner for my son’s wedding too.

Answer: Not big on memorized rigid toasts. Prefer to personalize something to the actual person or specific occasion. I would suggest you do the same for your son’s wedding. However there are hundreds of proven popular ones on the web that you could use or adapt by just googling wedding toasts. When I practised law I used Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew: “And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends”. Now older and more philosophical I like Robert Louis Stevenson: “A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect”.

I often finish with a short one word toast in a specific language so my top 10 go to are simple:

1. Cheers  English
2. Chimo  Eskimo
3. A Votre Sante France
4. Prost German
5. Cin Cin (Chin-Chin ) Italy
6. Skol Sweden
7. Kampai Japan
8. Salut (Sah-Lud) Spain
9. Gan Bay China
10. Yass-Ooh Greece

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