Message: | I just looked at the thread re. Valentino's and remembered a forgettable anniversary dinner we had there in the late 70's, after a rhapsodic review in the Times by Lois Dwan. Everything we were served had the same sauce which tasted strongly of commercial stock base. The service was desultory and for dessert, we were served raspberry tarts with burned pastry. How have they survived all these years?
That got me thinking about earlier, more pleasant restaurant memories, though. Does anyone remember The Nine Muses? That was a family favorite budget gourmet destination when I was a kid. My introduction to cold, cooked artichoke with vinaigrette, which, as I recall, was the ubiquitous appetizer there. And Cafe de Paris, where an adventurous baby chowhound could try brains with mustard sauce and have crepes Suzettes flambeed at tableside---the alcohol in the liquers those crepes were drenched with, didn't completely burn off. Taix downtown, with the family-style long tables, where heaping platters and bowls of beef, chicken, peas and fried potatoes were passed around among strange tablemates.
El Amigo on Western Avenue is possibly my earliest restaurant memory, from the early fifties--a huge barn or a place, where the seed of my lifelong love of Mexican food was planted. There was always a little bowl of escabeche on the table, and the owner would remark about how my brother and I devoured the spicy carrots, celery and onions. The food was probably mediocre, but it was there that the tastes of frijoles, tortillas and chiles were etched into the palate of my soul.
Any gone but not forgotten L.A. eateries from the distant past fellow chowhounds care to rhapsodize about? |