A couple days ago, hunting through my bookshelves for The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, I uncovered this true blast from the past hiding behind my old LA restaurant guides. It's called LA: The Book, and it's essentially a subversive artist's book masquerading as a luxury lifestyle guide. Published in 1981, it begins:
I can think of few more succinct reminders that a "nice" restaurant usually had to be French. (Although we do find some Italian, a couple nascent California Cuisine restaurants, and two of the first Asian-fusion restaurants in the country.)
There's this irresistible image of Rex Il Ristorante (where the famous learning to eat scene in Pretty Woman was shot):
Wolfgang Puck and Michael McCarty on promenade:
And finally, this excerpt from performance artist Rachel Rosenthal's 1981 Soldier of Fortune, in which she locates the blackening soul of conspicuous consumption squarely in the fine dining room:
