Old Menus: LA in the Eighties
November 5, 2018
The other day Francis Lam said to me, “LA in the eighties – it must have been such a great place to eat!” A few hours later a young social media reporter said the same thing.
It made me remember what Jonathan Waxman, then chef at Michael’s in Santa Monica, told me at the time: “I can feed my customers anything – so long as it’s not the same thing they ate last night.”
There was such a sense of excitement about food in the city, a sense that anything was possible. I’ve been rooting through one of my (many) boxes of old menus, to see what I could find. Here are just a few examples of the kinds of special meals chefs were conjuring up.
A series of wine and food dinners featuring Haut Brion, which spread across the city at many different kinds of restaurants: New American, Italian and Japanese.
The first was at Michael’s
And finally, a lunch for the proprietors of the great Paris restaurant, Taillevant. Wish I could remember where it took place. Anybody know?
Tomorrow, a group of great old menus from the Bay Area in the eighties. And the next day, a few from France… I might be having too much fun taking this walk down memory lane.
Categorised in: restaurants
1 Comment
Having lived in LA from 1979 to 1992, I’m loving re-living those times looking through these menus. I still, to this day, make the Grape and Brie Quesadilla from Trumps as an appetizer and people always ask me where it came from.