STEPPING UPTOWN AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA
All photos by Barry Stein
By Bob Vickrey
During the closing credits of many television variety shows of the 1950’s and ‘60’s, the off-camera announcer would routinely remind viewers, “Hotel accommodations for tonight’s guests during their stay in New York City were graciously provided by the beautiful Waldorf Astoria Hotel.”
Since no one ever offered those same accommodations during my stays in New York, last month’s lunch club visit to the glitzy new Beverly Hills Waldorf provided my first glimpse into at least one version of the storied hotel.
The original New York City hotel was built in 1893 in two stages, as the Waldorf Hotel and the Astoria Hotel, which accounts for its later dual name. The hotels were demolished in 1929 to make way for the construction of the Empire State building. The business reopened as the Waldorf Astoria two years later in its present location on Park Avenue, and quickly became known as one of the world’s most prestigious hotels.
World-renowned figures stayed at the hotel, including Winston Churchill and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and have luxury suites named after them.
Of course in Beverly Hills, the owners will likely put their own Hollywood spin on naming guest suites. Will we see luxury room options with names such as, the “Pauley Shore Suite” and “The ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Penthouse” in our own L.A. version of the Waldorf?
The glitzy new 12-story Beverly Hills Waldorf, with 119 “deluxe” rooms and 51 suites, opened last summer at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards, where the Robinsons-May department store once stood. Rooms range from a nominal $815 for mere “commoners,” to the $20,000-a-night Presidential Suite for the rest of us.
Our special lunch guest last month was Bobbie Farberow, the former co-owner of the well known Village landmark, Mort’s Palisades Delicatessen, which had been named after her late husband Mort.
The Farberows opened their deli in 1974 on Swarthmore Avenue, and it quickly became one of the most popular restaurant destinations in the village. Several years later, the modest deli moved to a larger location across the street, where it thrived for many years until Bobbie decided to retire from the business. She sold the lease to former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan in 2007, who remodeled the building into the Village Pantry and adjoining Oak Room.
Mort’s Deli was mentioned often during those early planning meetings with developer Rick Caruso for his new Palisades Village project. One of the most frequently heard suggestions from attendees was a request to bring back a restaurant similar to “Mort’s.”
When the restaurant closed, Bobbie dusted off her teaching credential she had acquired many years earlier and began teaching at Palisades Elementary. She now serves as a special instructor in the “intervention” program for kindergarten students who face various challenges in the classroom.
Bobbie had already scouted out the new digs at the Waldorf a few weeks earlier with several girlfriends, but this was our first look at the swanky joint. We found the staff very welcoming from the time we arrived at the front door all the way to our restaurant destination, Jean-Georges Beverly Hills, located just off the main lobby.
Special guest Bobbie Farberow and waiter Michael-Angelo Lepe
We could immediately tell that our waiter, Michael-Angelo Lepe, was a seasoned pro—and we figured with a name that elegant, we were in very capable hands. We began with an appetizer of Crispy Monterey Calamari served with a citrus chili dip. Barry and I now consider ourselves calamari experts since we order it so often, and we gave it two big thumbs up.
As usual, Arnie already knew what he wanted, and ordered the Grilled Bigeye Tuna Burger with Miso mayonnaise—and, please sir—hold the Yuzu pickles. Bobbie had the Grilled Chicken Club with extra-crispy bacon on toasted sourdough. (She generously allowed them to save the accompanying fried egg for their next customer.)
Barry ordered the Warm Shrimp Salad on tender greens with avocado and champagne dressing. My indecision slowed down the ordering process until Michael-Angelo (I kept wondering if that was his real name) strongly recommended the “Wild Stripped Bass” special, which was crusted with sesame seeds in a sweet-and-sour broth with mushrooms, olives, celery, and seemingly, just about everything else they found on their kitchen counter. Even though my lunch was absolutely delicious, all those ingredients didn’t occupy very much space on the plate—nor in my stomach afterward.
So, we capped off our exceptional lunch with cappuccinos and shared a slice of warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream on the side.
Since Bobbie’s chicken club sandwich was roughly the size of Barry’s SUV, several of us received elegant Waldorf “doggie bags” filled with her leftovers. Given the price of our tab, I’m certainly glad we managed two meals out of this trip.
On the way out of the hotel, Bobbie whispered to me, “Even though we tend to make fun of this kind of extravagance, I think I could possibly become accustomed to this lifestyle.”
She’s right. Maybe this weekend I’ll give the front desk a call and see if that $20,000-a-night Presidential Suite is available.
Bob Vickrey is a writer whose columns appear in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and the Waco Tribune-Herald. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
Just about the entire contents of our wallets
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Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
