A classic L.A. restaurant where professional service is still in style

A devastating year for restaurant closures, plus the world’s most dangerous wine, a soup dumpling battle, a stocking full of restaurant guides to plan your next few weeks of eating, the best recipes of 2023 and from Musso & Frank ... the dividend. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

The classic

Sand dabs, creamed spinach and a martini at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

“Good evening, Ms. Ochoa.”

It had been exactly a year since I’d been to Musso & Frank Grill — “the oldest restaurant in Hollywood ... since 1919” as the menu famously says. But as I walked in from the cold through Musso’s back entrance — an entry that always feels a bit clandestine with its glimpse of the busy kitchen that could easily accommodate a Hollywood movie fight scene — I was greeted by name as if I’d been coming here once a week.

I was once a Musso’s regular, back when I was the editor of the L.A. Weekly, whose offices used to be a few blocks away. Writers loved the romance of meeting at Musso’s where Raymond Chandler, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Parker, Kurt Vonnegut and many other famous and almost-famous writers ate and drank.

On this night, a close friend and I were feeling nostalgic and managed to secure an online reservation — not as easy as it used to be in the old days. We got an intimate booth for two and ice-cold martinis. I didn’t see my favorite hearts of romaine salad on the now more-limited menu. But our waiter knew exactly what I meant when I asked and brought me the crisp salad along with a side of Roquefort cheese vinaigrette to spoon on top.

Chilled martini with “the dividend” chilling on the side, plus hearts of romaine salad at Musso & Frank Grill in Hollywood.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Before our martini glasses reached empty, our waiter was back to fill them to the top again with extra gin chilling in the accompanying pony or mini carafe set into its own diminutive ice bucket.

“It’s ‘the dividend,’ as we like to say,” he told us after explaining that a Musso martini always comes in a small cocktail glass so that the gin doesn’t get warm as you sip.

My sautéed sand dabs meuniere, with brown butter, lemon and capers, were just as I remembered them, gently crisped on the outside and almost nutty from the brown butter flavoring the fish. Creamed spinach on the side seemed required. A hot cup of coffee — not espresso — was the perfect send-off.

As much as I enjoyed the food, however, I was reminded that Musso’s is a place where professional service has not gone out of style. So many restaurant owners around town talk about the difficulty of finding cooks and servers more than two years after California restaurants began reopening after the COVID shutdowns.

The pain is real for restaurants, which had to adjust to the long strikes in Hollywood that kept swaths of regular customers at home, not to mention inflation and other stresses. Reporter Stephanie Breijo compiled a devastating list of more than 65 notable restaurants that closed in 2023.

“It’s hard to comprehend the invoices you see,” Walter Manzke, chef and co-owner of République, Bicyclette and the luxury tasting menu spot Manzke, told Breijo about his decision to close Petty Cash Taqueria and Grand Central Market’s Sari Sari Store. “You don’t have a choice when you have to fix the stove.”

“The food-service industry needs to come together and help consumers understand they are eating food that is artificially priced and often made by immigrants, single moms and people of color who work two jobs to survive,” Border Grill and Socalo chef and co-founder Mary Sue Milliken told Daniel Miller in his provocative piece asking 17 prominent Angelenos to weigh in on the question Time magazine posed 30 years ago: Is the City of Angels going to hell? Milliken, as well as KCRW’s Evan Kleiman (who had lovely things to say about Jonathan Gold‘s positive impact on the city); Connie Chung Joe, chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, who credited Roy Choi and his Kogi food trucks for helping Angelenos appreciate Korean food, and Homeboy Industry‘s Father Greg Boyle were some of notable personalities who were optimistic about Los Angeles. “Anybody who suggests we haven’t made progress,” said Boyle, “isn’t paying attention.”

As I went to leave Musso’s, past the polished wood booths and through the back hall where the restaurant is said to have installed Hollywood’s first pay phone, I thought about the wait staff at work in their red jackets and crisp white shirts as well as the brigade of chefs, prep cooks and dishwashers hard at work in the kitchen. The restaurant pros at Musso’s? That’s the dividend.

For more on Musso & Frank, Bharbi Hazarika put together a collection of stories written by L.A. Times writers to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the restaurant in 2019. You can read it here.

More from L.A. Times Food:

Chris Bianco at his DTLA restaurant Pane Bianco with a rediscovered painting of a mystery woman made by his father Leonard Bianco.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

• Dumpling challenge: To that perennial question we get at the end of every December — what will the new year bring in food? — Lucas Kwan Peterson has one answer: Soup dumpling battle! His review of Costa Mesa’s Paradise Dynasty preps us for the coming competition between the upstart and reigning dumpling champ Din Tai Fung. The two will face off next year when a branch of the Singaporean chain arrives at the Americana at Brand across the way from Din Tai Fung at the Glendale Galleria. “Sure,” soup dumplings are “a simple concept, in theory,” Peterson writes, “but then again, so is operating a table saw.”
• Ani Duzdabanyan has a fascinating tale of smuggled grapes from Iran, where alcohol has been banned since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and an Armenian vintner’s dream of making “wine in exile.” The first release of the wine that vintner Vahe Keushguerian named Mòläna, a red made from Rasheh grapes, is on the wine list at Momed in Atwater and sold by the bottle in limited quantities at a few wine shops around town. “SOMM: Cup of Salvation,” a documentary about “the most dangerous wine in the world,” as Dustin Wilson, master sommelier and co-founder of Verve Wine, calls it, will air on the wine-and-food streaming service SOMM TV early next year.
• Who is the beautiful woman wearing a shawl in the painting at Pane Bianco inside the Row DTLA? Daniel Miller tells the story of the mysterious lady, an unpaid debt and the painting’s artist, the father of celebrated pizzaiolo Chris Bianco.
• If you’re still trying to figure out your dining plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Danielle Dorsey has 18 holiday restaurant suggestions.
• Beyond the holidays, we have a guide to 14 of the most affordable restaurants from Bill Addison‘s 101 Best Restaurants in L.A.
• If you’re heading out of town, Jenn Harris has a guide to the best places to eat in Las Vegas right now.
• And if you’re looking for places to eat on New Year’s Eve and New Year Day, Tiffany Tse has 24 great spots to help you ring in 2024.
• Of course, you might be staying home to cook. Julie Giuffrida compiled our 12 most popular recipes of 2023.
• By the way, I recently joined a new podcast called “Three Ingredients” with chef Nancy Silverton and Ruth Reichl, author, former Gourmet editor and restaurant critic for the New York Times and L.A. Times. Among many other things, we talk about critic bait, the violence of pesto and the first James Beard Awards.