27 September 2019

100th Anniversary of Musso and Frank Grill in Hollywood

I first stepped into Hollywood’s Musso and Frank Grill in the fall of 1992. I was the guest of my dear friend Shirley Wilson. She knew I loved vintage Hollywood and suggested we go there to get a real taste of a classy Hollywood restaurant. She was right. Musso and Frank sits on Hollywood Boulevard, virtually untouched through the years. In fact, one hundred of them, as today is the 100th anniversary of the opening of the restaurant.

Everyone who has been anyone has eaten at the Grill. It was a hangout for famous Hollywood writers for decades, as well as actors, directors, producers, and anyone else who had anything to do with Hollywood.

The author, at his favorite Hollywood restaurant in 2019.
One of my favorite memories of M&F is from the second or third time I went there. We sat on the bar side (rather than the usual dining room side). Our waiter came up to us and I said something about how I heard F. Scott Fitzgerald loved to come in and get drunk here. He smiled yes, and said “In fact, you’re sitting in his favorite booth!” I don’t care if he was lying; he was sweet to say it.



I’ve had a love affair with M&F for more than twenty years, eating there whenever I got the chance to be in town. I have such admiration for the restaurant and its history that I included it as a major set piece in two of my James Murray Mystery novels set in the 1930s: Sabotage at RKO Studio (The James Murray Mysteries Book 2) where James takes his new girlfriend for their first big night out after the opening of the movie "King Kong"; and in Abduction at Griffith Observatory: A James Murray Mystery (The James Murray Mysteries ) (Volume 3) where James’s world comes crashing down around him. It’s so neat knowing my characters could very possible have eaten at this wonderful restaurant!

26 September 2019

The Taste of Things to Come

In January 2015, I had to have a heart defect repaired. I’ve written a lot about that week and the subsequent effects the surgery has had on my life. One of the most pronounced changes at the time, was how everything I put in my mouth tasted of copper: water, hamburgers, chips, cherry pie. You name it: copper. That lasted about six months and (very) slowly faded away.

Shortly after I regained my proper sense of taste, I was diagnosed with cancer and had to begin lifelong chemo treatments. After they started, I lost part of my sense of taste again. This time: sugar had no taste for me AT ALL. Cakes, pies, chocolates, anything sweet now tasted flat. It was both a good thing (not craving sweets has helped me lose weight) and a bad thing (when I want a piece of pie, I want it to taste like a piece of pie, dammit!).

Now, four years since chemo started, my taste buds are changing again. It’s hard to describe what’s going on this time, but I am not enjoying foods that have a lot of flavoring to them. An example: I used to love barbecue potato chips. Now, no. Something about them tastes wretched. I am starting to prefer plain chips (which I used to hate). I prefer eating a piece of chicken with no flavoring (salt, of course, is basically forbidden to me), or a piece of bread with nothing, a plain tortilla, etc. I’m kinda hoping this changes pretty soon. I don’t know of any change to my body or lifestyle that is causing it and this kind of food is already starting to get boring.