Following Musso & Frank Grill’s latest silver screen close-up in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the starry Los Angeles eatery will soon cement its fame, Tinseltown-style. On Friday, Sept. 27, the restaurant will receive its own terrazzo and brass star, just steps from the entrance on Hollywood Boulevard and adjacent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in honor of its acceptance of the first-ever “award of excellence” from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Additionally, the day will officially be declared Musso & Frank Day by the City of Los Angeles.
The open-to-the-public celebration coincides with the exact date of the legendary Hollywood hangout’s 100th anniversary, a milestone that recently prompted longtime staff such as the late Sergio Gonzalez (a waiter for over 40 years) and famous patrons such as John Travolta, David Lynch, Dita Von Teese and Steven Soderbergh to share their favorite Musso & Frank memories with The Hollywood Reporter.
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Jimmy Pappas, the restaurant’s “honorary mayor,” told THR earlier this year that he has seen “more A-list celebrities at Musso & Frank than I have in all my years working at three major motion picture studios: Joe Namath, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, Kathy Bates, Anthony Hopkins, Florence Henderson, Nicolas Cage. The great thing is there are no paparazzi or autograph hounds in here. The management knows how to really run a restaurant with privacy.”
Other famous guests read like a who’s who of Hollywood: Charlie Chaplin, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Steve McQueen, Johnny Depp and The Rolling Stones. The location has also made appearances in Mad Men, Ed Wood, Ray Donovan, The Kominsky Method and Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11.
Restaurateur Joseph Musso and Frank Toulet opened Musso & Frank Grill in 1919 and hired French chef Jean Rue in 1922. The restaurant moved one door down Hollywood Boulevard in 1934 and expanded with a second dining room in 1955. It changed hands in 1927 when Musso and Toulet sold the restaurant to Joseph Carissimi and John Mosso.
Today, the restaurant is owned and operated by the families of Mosso’s three granddaughters: Cathy and John Echeverria and their son, Mark (who serves as Musso & Frank’s COO); Anne and Steve Jones; and Kristen and Richard Kohlmeyer.
In a statement, Mark Echeverria said that Tarantino is “a longtime patron. … When he wanted to make this restaurant a pivotal part of the movie, it really meant a lot.”
The current and third chef in the history of the restaurant, J.P. Amateau (son of the late writer-producer-director Rod Amateau), has continued a fresh spin on renowned menu staples: Musso & Frank’s Perfect Martini (shaken not stirred); perfectly cooked and seasoned steaks; and Fettucine Alfredo based on a recipe brought to the restaurant by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks from the original Alfredo’s eatery in Italy.
Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood; mussoandfrank.com
