Making History: The Brown Derby
A Journey Through the 1949 Cookbook From One of Los Angeles' Most Famous Restaurants.
This is the third edition of a new occasional feature on The Mix called “Making History,” in which we’ll crack open those dusty cookbooks of a once-renowned restaurants and see if their bill of fare still holds up.
These days, the Brown Derby restaurant is known primarily for two things: the Brown Derby cocktail, a drink that the joint didn’t even invent; and the Cobb Salad, one of the greatest salads in history, yet one that most people don’t know originated at the Hollywood hotspot. That’s because the owner of the Brown Derby, Robert H. Cobb, named the large-format chefs-salad-on-steroids after himself, not his restaurant.
That’s a pretty sad fate for a place that, in its day, was one of the most famous restaurants in the world.
The Brown Derby opened on Wilshire Boulevard, across from the Ambassador Hotel, in 1926. The restaurant’s defining characteristic was, is and always shall be that the building was in the shape of a large, brown derby. Atop the crown was a neon sign that flashed the message “Eat at the Hat.”