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COBB SALAD DAYS
By Leslee Komaiko 

The 'Brown' Derby Ain't What it Was

I've always liked a bit of history with my meal. So, hoping to tap into
Los Angeles legend, and maybe even ogle an aged celebrity or two, a few
friends and I piled into a car one recent Saturday night. Our
destination: the original Brown Derby on Wilshire Boulevard, the only
Brown Derby restaurant, in what was once a thriving Los Angeles quartet,
that was shaped like a hat.

Although we knew this Derby had been razed in the early '80s-by
developers who probably never tasted the trademark Cobb Salad, named
after restaurant president Bob Cobb-we also knew that the hat's dome had
been salvaged. Kind of. After trimming the brim, the hat was integrated
into the design for the Brown Derby Plaza, which is essentially a Korean
mini-mall. The Derby itself is now called Cafe Namuhana, which means
"one tree." Why the Derby became a tree I have no idea.

We pulled up to the spot, across from the Ambassador Hotel, and spied...
the silver derby! The joint had been painted.  "It looks like a reactor
at San Onofre," one friend wistfully observed. We went inside.

Picture the Matterhorn. Scale it down to maybe 1/20 the size. Then
decorate it with Coors Lite bottle caps, a flashing plastic Santa, and
jam in a half dozen desk lamps-yes, desk lamps. This is what you'll find
under the silver derby. The walls, which once featured celebrity
caricatures of Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, Orson Welles and others,
today are painted a none-too-subtle canary yellow. In place of the
celebs, busty comic book vixens peer out of miniature frames.

At least they are caricatures, of a sort.


Remember Dorothy

My friends quickly discovered a secret of the "Matterhorn." If you stand
on one side of the restaurant you can hear, in perfect clarity,
conversations taking place on the other side. I put this to the test as
I chatted up our sweet and vaguely new wave waiter, Jacob. I asked if
any celebrities patronize the silver derby.

Jacob seemed humored by the question. "Only Korean celebrities
sometimes," he said.

"What about tourists? Do they ever come here expecting to find the Brown
Derby?"

Jacob shook his head. "We get Korean tour groups."

"Do you serve Cobb salad?"

From Jacob's expression I knew the answer was no. Instead he brought us
several menus-in Korean. Since we were a mostly monolingual group, with
bits of various romance languages sprinkled in, we asked Jacob to share
a few of the specials.

"Have you tried Korean rice cakes?" he offered.

I pondered the question, recalling Dorothy Lamour's recipe for Shrimp
Creole with rice, which she contributed to the Brown Derby. Perhaps
Korean rice cakes were derivative of this meal. Then again, we had just
eaten. Maybe the best plan was simply to drink ourselves silly.


Do You Soju?

I thought of ordering a martini, but somehow the confines did not
convince me the drink would arrive true to form. I asked instead if the
silver derby served soju, an alcoholic beverage which is fruity like a
wine cooler, but with significantly more punch.

"We have eight flavors: lemon, yogurt, peach, grape, melon,
blackberry..."

"What's your favorite?" one of my posse asked.

"Ladies like melon," Jacob answered. "Guys just want to get drunk."

We ended up sharing a pitcher of perfectly tasty lemon soju. The
blackberry that followed was less agreeable, carrying the finish of a
cold medicine. Even the boiled peanuts served alongside could not redeem
it. I knew the days of thick steak and hash browns were gone.

We headed to the karaoke lounge in the back room. Although no one was
singing, there were enough Korean teens here to fill a school bus. They
were gathered around large tables, smoking up a storm. One group was
celebrating a birthday. I sat at an empty table and paged through a
karaoke song book. In addition to Ace of Base and Air Supply, I
discovered selections from Perry Como and the charmingly misspelled
Elvie Presiey.

"Hey," said a guy at the nearby table. "Are you a reporter?"

I came clean. Then I asked this maybe 20-year old guy if he knew the
history of the place. Was he aware that the Silver Derby was once home
to one of the most famous restaurants in Los Angeles, that every
celebrity of note had spent many an hour in its confines?

"We just know it as a drinking place," he said. Then he took a drag of
his cigarette, just like Humphrey Bogart, a Derby regular.