Customer Reviews

Hollywood Du Jour: Lost Recipes of Legendary Hollywood Haunts

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read Jonathan Reynolds' article in the NYTimes Magazine--an interview with a wacky-but-wonderful foodie whose current favorite cookbook is Hollywood du Jour, so I sent for it. It's great. I love the recipes, but the lore of these extinct Hollywood restaurants is great reading. I immediately sent one to my mother who had fond memories of the Brown Derby, Coconut Grove and Bullock's Wilshire, since she spent most of her young adult years in L.A. She always talked about grapefruit cake and Goodwin has the recipe--and the original Cobb Salad. If you collect cookbooks, take it from Alan Davidson, Foodie and gourmet historian and winner of the 2003 Praemium Erasmianum award for contributions to European culture, society and social sciences-"a very good book". I say 5 stars!

Having grown up near most of the restaurants I thoroughly enjoyed reading the history contained in this book. The sticky orange buns from Tick Tock are now part of Sunday brunches at home.

I gave this book to my daughter's father-in-law since his dad was the matre d at Chasens for years. He thoroughly enjoyed reading the recipes and memories. He remembers a lot of the recipes and now can cook them himself!

If you love old Hollywood and wonderful food, this is the book for you.
The pictures are also terrific.
Make sure you try the Grapefruit from the Brown Derby!
This book makes a great hoestess gift.

I have wanted this book for some time and finally received it for Christmas. I was disappointed to see how small it is and how few recipes are actually included. The stories of the various restaurants are interesting enough but there are not very many photographs, so it is difficult to get a sense of the place. The recipes are few and far between, with one or two included for each restaurant, but many of them just for drinks. I was really hoping for a book that had a good selection of the dishes that were signatures of these forgotten hot spots - recipes that were favorites of celebrity patrons, or that had an interesting story behind them. Unfortunately, the book doesn't have that kind of depth. It's a cursory review of establishments that are now Hollywood history.