When I was eight, my culinary preferences stretched only as far as the Sherman Oaks Koo Koo Roo, a long-defunct rotisserie chicken chain that served the best Caesar salad in the world—or at least in the Valley. My parents, though, yearned for variety and implemented what my dad dubbed “The Palette Expansion Program.” Its terms were simple: Blindfolded with a backwards hoodie, my twin brother and I would spin around in front of a wall-hanging world map, dizzily plopping one finger on a region with a cuisine that—it was agreed—we would try.
That was how I discovered Trader Vic’s, a tiki bar and South Pacific Island–themed eatery at the Beverly Hills Hilton. Trader Vic’s was far from real Polynesian food, and it trafficked in stereotypes (the totem carving out front, for starters) that betrayed what it actually was: a tacky chain restaurant. Still, I fell in love. In love with the crab rangoon on the “pupu platter” and nonalcoholic mai tais (Trader Vic’s claims to have invented both) and with the rattan dining room décor and faux thatched roof.
Trader Vic’s opened in Oakland in 1934. Its 1955 Beverly Hills outpost was an overnight success with celebrities and normal Angelenos alike, one of many hokey “international” eateries that, in my childhood, still dotted the city. Like Hollywood movies, these haunts replicated the world beyond the San Bernardino Mountains with gusto, however inaccurately. In the midtwentieth century, the city was advertised to newcomers as permissive, sunny, and a little licentious, ideas dramatized by restaurateurs with a predilection for other warm, foreign locales—sometimes their birthplaces, sometimes not—from Tahiti to Los Cabos.
But these standbys are fading fast. The 1930 La Golondrina Cafe on Olvera Street, adorned with Frida Kahloesque murals, closed in 2024. This year LA lost Papa Cristo’s, a Greek, family-run emporium that had operated since 1948; Guido’s, a dark, red-booth Italian spot on Sawtelle; and The Mayan, a neo-Mesoamerican movie palace turned nightclub that opened in 1927 and hosted its final performance in September. Earlier casualties include Chinatown’s Hop Louie, which opened in 1941 with a five-story pagoda and shuttered in 2016, and of course my dearly departed Trader Vic’s, which pulled the plug on its Beverly Hills operation in 2017 following an ill-fated 2007 remodel that downgraded the sprawling café to a smaller poolside lounge.
As one beloved LA establishment after another surrenders to the hegemon of matcha minimalism, I’ve been taking refuge at Casa Vega—the Ventura Boulevard cantina where Marlon Brando supposedly gained eighty pounds before shooting Apocalypse Now (1979)—and Beverly Boulevard’s El Coyote. The former even has an “Ensaladas Caesar’s”—though rumor has it that crowd favorite Koo Koo Roo may be in for a reboot, in which case I’ll revert to girlhood habits. I’ve heard, too, that my favorite tiki outpost will return to West Hollywood this year, and while the island oasis may not summon the same crowd as it did during its heyday, at least this time I’ll be able to try the nonvirgin mai tai.