![]() It says Beverly Hills, but it's really from Jean Leon's Malibu restaurant, which was the last word in sophistication in the 1980s and is almost completely forgotten today. Geoffrey's has now outlived the famous Holiday House that it replaced in the 1980s and it's hard to imagine driving up PCH without passing the seemingly eternally popular Malibu Seafood and Neptune's Net.īut ultimately, restaurants are more ephemeral as the matchboxes and menus that remain as their fossil record. So has Tra di Noi, on the other side of the center. Tony's Taverna has outlasted all of the earlier restaurants and almost all of the other local businesses on that side of the Malibu Country Mart and become a Malibu institution. ![]() Some of them have remarkable staying power:Īfter more than 30 years, Godmother is still owned and operated by the indomitable Dolores Walsh Jim Musante, son of the original John of John's Garden retired in 2012, but the restaurant was smoothly transferred to his longtime employee Boyen Kinov. There have been plenty of memorable Malibu restaurants. Although the elegant, expensive Japanese-themed venue bears little resemblance to the over the top Polynesian kitsch of the old Tonga-Lei, there's the same element of hyperreality used to set an exotic stage set on which patrons play out their personal dramas against a backdrop of the Pacific. In an odd way, Nobu is Tonga Lei's real successor. I wrote more about the site in an earlier post, which you can read here. The "live sea food from ocean to plate" sounds like you'd better eat it fast, before it crawls away. The Las Flores Inn in the golden age of automobile day tripping, probably around 1930. The sea lions were long gone when I was a child, but many oldtimers remember buying anchovies at the restaurant to feed Josephine-the original sea lion-and her successors in the big tank in the parking lot. C hris Polis bought the Las Flores Inn in 1944, and built the "world's longest glassed-in dining room," which is still there as part of Duke's Malibu Restaurant. During stormy weather or Southern Hemisphere swell waves would break on the windows, and occasionally broke the windows. The sea really was right outside the window. This is a Sea Lion ad from the 1969 Malibu phone directory. Of course they have the ubiquitous kale salad, but at least it has a tropical twist: "Kale, butter lettuce, grapefruit, avocado, candied macadamia nuts, ginger vinaigrette, $9." Beneath the Hawaiian trappings, it still retains much of its mid-century modern ambiance, but without the acres of linoleum and the sticky green naugahyde banquettes I remember vividly from my childhood. Today its Duke's, from 1944 until 1984 it was the Sea Lion.Īfter a brief interlude when it was owned by the Hungry Tiger chain in the late 1980s and was called "Charley Brown's Steakhouse," the Sea Lion turned Hawaiian and became Duke's Malibu Restaurant in 1996. While neither the name nor the original structure survive, there's always been a restaurant on the site. The Las Flores Inn, built in 1914, also served as a general store in addition to being a restaurant. ![]() When it first opened in the Malibu Colony, it served as restaurant, pharmacy and general store. The Malibu Inn has moved, changed hands often, and spent years in limbo between owners, but it has held onto its name since the 1920s. Jones built the inn and sold groceries, dry goods and patent medicines, in addition to establishing the restaurant. ![]() You can just make out the name Art Jones under the sign advertising real estate. ![]() The original Malibu Inn was demolished in 1951, after Pacific Coast Highway was rerouted inland, away from what is now Malibu Road. Currently, it's the new home of Casa Escobar, which was located next to the Malibu movie theater for years, before a devastating fire, followed by formidable rent increases. It's changed hands so many times since the Crazy Horse days that it's hard to keep track. The original building was demolished in 1951, but White relocated to the inn's current location, opposite the Malibu Pier, and the White family continued to own and operate the inn until the 1970s, when it became the Crazy Horse Saloon, an almost legendary watering hole and rock and roll club owned briefly by singer-songwriter Neil Young. Real estate entrepreneur Art Jones, who built the inn in the 1920s, eventually sold it to White. Robert Ray White began working at the inn in the late 1930s. The ad offers no explanation for the cartoon chicken on a pogo stick. This is an ad for the Malibu Inn from the 1969 Malibu phone directory. The Top o' the Sea opened in one of the twin turrets at the end of Malibu Pier in 1950, making it one of the earliest restaurants in town, but the record holders for the two oldest eateries in Malibu go to the Malibu Inn Cafe and the Las Flores Inn. ![]()
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