MUCHO MUSSO

I once saw Sally Kellerman in Musso and Frank on Hollywood Boulevard.  And then I saw her in an episode of 90210, in a scene filmed in Musso and Frank.  Art imitating life imitating art.  Like this:

 

Another time I was there I saw Tim Curry sitting at a table right by the front window so that anybody passing in the street could see him.  I suppose he must have wanted it that way.  He didn’t look like this:

 

Musso and Frank is one of my favourite restaurants in the world - it's been there since 1920, the year before Prohibition started - and not only because of the presence of celebrities.  But it does no harm. 

 

Of course it’s a long way from where I live to Musso’s but I do my best to recreate certain elements of the experience, not least the martinis.. When I was there last year the bartender gave me some cocktail stirrers to take away as a souvenir, which helps a little, though I don’t use them in martinis. And of course I never had the little flask containing a second helping, and which is apparently called a sidecar.

The food is another matter.  One of the starters that always hits the spot is celery sticks filled with blue cheese, which look like this:

Photo by Caroline Gannon.

 

So the inamorata and I tried to recreate them – she did most of the hard work. I found a convincing recipe online though it required various things we didn’t have to hand.  

The cheese should have been Roquefort but all I had was Stilton left over from Christmas. You’re supposed to thin the cheese to make it more pliable by the addition of sour cream, but we had Greek yoghurt.  And then supposedly you use a piping bag to put the mixture into the celery. I believe I’ve never so much as touched a piping bag. And frankly our celery was too thin to hold much cheese, and as you can see, I went a bit mad with the smoked paprika. But apart from all that it really wasn’t bad at all. 

 

 

 

WHAT I DRANK ON MY HOLIDAYS

Want to see some evidence of enthusiastic but prudent alcohol intake?

Well of course you do.

Here's a Manhattan in the bar at the Hilton Garden Hotel, Heathrow.

This pic is by me, all the rest were taken by Caroline 'hot shot' Gannon

A martini at Musso and Frank in LA.:

 

A couple of 'James Bond Martinis' at The Kaiser Grill in Palm Springs:

 

Another at Lulu's, also Palm Springs - hey, it's martini kind of town.

Another at the bar in the Bonaventure, LA (the revolving restauarant was closed – and not revolving), and yes, the glass could have been a LOT fuller:

 

And a Margaraita, also in LA, at a somewhat fancy Mexican restaurant, La Conde:

 

Made by this guy:

Cheers and a happy equinox to you and yours.  

DRY AND SOUR

While in California, I did my best to emulate Kim Gordon’s dad in the drinking, if not the making of, cocktails.

Perhaps the most important stop was Musso and Frank, on Hollywood Boulevard, a place I always say is my favorite restaurant in the whole world, and I was there to raise a martini in memory of Ruben Rueda, late barman (and definitely not a mixologist) at that establishment. 

2019 is Musso and Frank’s hundred year anniversary – I bought a badge to that effect:

1919 was also the year that Prohibition started and I would have thought it was a very bad year to open a restaurant but maybe it was in fact a very good year to do it.

I went there for Saturday lunch with my pal Scott.  My martini looked like this:

I thought there might not be much of a bar crowd on a weekend lunchtime but I was wrong.  Along with the martini, I had a French dip sandwich with some of the biggest potato chips I’ve ever seen:

Scott and I found an ebullient friend, name of Gloria.  The man behind her is her long-suffering husband (and no, I don’t know what kind of relationship they have), and thought it best not to find out.

I was staying at the Biltmore downtown, where all kinds of movies and TV shows have been filmed, including Mad Men and not least National Treasure, a fact confirmed by this picture in my room, of Nick Cage and Diane Kruger.

 The Biltmore also does a damn fine martini.

I went off to the desert and although the desert doesn’t scream ‘great martini’ I spent one night in Palm Springs where a bar called Zin served me a couple of more than adequate silver bullets. This was one made with Aviation gin and two olives.

This one was made with Botanist gin and three olives, and cost a dollar more than the previous one, and was worth it

In the course of my two drinks, the barman, named Jeremiah, and I discussed soccer, rugby, cricket, and the importance of giving children music lessons at the earliest impossible moment.

I also stayed a couple of nights in LA with my pals Anthony and Elina (and their young un Astra).  Anthony is serious about many things, coffee, literature, and in this case the Trinidad Sour, made with rye whisky, lime juice and amazingly large quantities of Angostura bitters. Anthony looks like this while concocting:

And the concoction looked like this.

SO LONG RUBEN

News just in that Ruben Rueda, the legendary bartender at Musso and Frank on Hollywood Boulevard has died.

This is a great shock though in truth he had hadn't looked well in recent times and had lost a great deal of weight, though he retained the large, tailored, Musso jacket.

I think he made as good a martini as anyone ever has.  Another one bites the olive.

THE STONED AND THE FURY

I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about William Faulkner’s reluctance to attend a White House dinner for Nobel Prize winners, complaining it was “a long way to go just to eat.”

http://psycho-gourmet.blogspot.com/2010/10/as-i-lay-drinking.html

And I know he certainly didn’t want to go to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, though he did go in the end, and now I’ve been reading a book titled Faulkner’s Mississippi (text by Willie Morris, photographs by William Eggleston) which contains an account of Faulkner’s days prior to his visit to Stockholm.

In honour of the trip he went on a colossal multi-day binge, in and around his  home in Oxford, Mississippi.  The family watched for a few days and then decided to sober him up.  They and told him it was a few days earlier than it actually was, that the trip was imminent and that he’d better pull himself together.  This was on a Saturday, though they told Faulkner it was Monday.  But drunk or sober Faulkner was no fool.  When he asked somebody where his stepson was, they replied he was at the football game.  Faulkner’s reaction, “Somebody’s been deceivin’ me.  They don’t play football games on Monday.  I’ve got three more days to drink.”

When Faulkner was in Hollywood, he drank prolifically at Musso and Frank (passim in this blog).  And I was just trawling the internet continuing my obsession with the work of William Eggleston, and I happened to find this photograph of his, which I’d never seen before.  My favorite photographer takes a picture of my favorite bar: does it get any better than this?

QUAFFING WITH KEEF (BY PROXY)

Last Thursday I helped a man lose his virginity twice in one night.  The man was J. Michael Walker, all round top artist, and the two losses came more or less simultaneously.  That's him on the right, above.  He had never been to Musso and Frank, and he’d never drunk a martini:  a sheltered life indeed for an Angelino.

Anyway this was all quite easily corrected thanks to my favorite barman Ruben Rueda (again, above, on the right).  The best thing about the Musso martini is that you get a full martini glass accompanied by a miniature glass flask containing pretty much the same again; so it’s essentially two for one.

Ruben is clearly a large man but he wears it well thanks to the generously tailored Musso jackets, and of course having been there a long time  - well over 40 years - he’s met many of the great and the good, as well as the not so great and the positively bad.   These include Keith Richards (and you can argue among yourselves about which category he fits into).  I found this little gem on the Musso website.

Hey Keith, no need to be hurtful, is there?