Thwarted

I was going to write about the new Commes des Garçon scent, Black, but Scentbar had only a beensy spray sample so they didn’t have enough to even decant. I did try it, and it’s a nice leather. But not enough time with it to give an honest run. I was walking to my car and passed by the old Spanish Kitchen.  Soooo..

Story Time!

Don Ray tells the fascinating story of the Spanish Kitchen in LA.

The Spanish Kitchen was still around when I moved to Los Angeles. It was a bit of a local legend. Not for the food, because there wasn’t any. The Spanish Kitchen had closed in 1961. It was eerily untouched: it looked as if the owners had just locked the doors one day and been abducted by aliens. The tables still had chairs stacked and menus on them- as well as years of dust.

The owners weren’t abducted by aliens of course. The couple that owned the building ran the restaurant since it opened in thirties. The husband was the cook and his wife ran the place. The patrons came as much for the homey atmosphere as for the food. But at some point the husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and at some point had to stop working. He went into a rest home where he later died. His wife tried to keep the business open, but her heart wasn’t in it. One day she put a sign that she was closing for vacation, and she never opened again.

As long as she was alive, it never again opened, but it was never touched. Her husband loved the place as much as he did his days and nights with his wife and while she knew she couldn’t run the place by herself she couldn’t bear to see it gone. In 1979 the LA Times wrote an article about it which gave it brief fame and I assume there wasn’t a week gone buy where real estate people tried to contact her to sell.

But she wouldn’t.

It was still untouched when the wife died in the late 90’s. A developer bought it, planning to restore it and make is a trendy restaurant. But the locals in the neighborhood didn’t want that- they already had a booze-slinging party restaurant practically across the street. Eventually Privé Salon moved in and created a spa on the top floor and a salon below. They even repurposed the original sign, jeeping the “Spa” part of “Spanish Kitchen”.

So the next time you’re in LA (Like if you’re attending the LA Scentsation event) and on Beverly near ScentBar, you can see a little bit of an LA love story in the sign on the old Spanish Kitchen.

Picture: Google Earth