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JOURNAL
LOCAL INTELLIGENCE
A handful of restaurants here have been serving essentially the same room since the years when Palm Springs was where Los Angeles came for the weekend. Low light, deep booths, dark walls, a piano somewhere in the corner, and a menu of steak, chops and Italian-American standards.
They are not attempting to be current, and that is the whole appeal. Service is formal in an older way. The drinks are the ones people ordered in the fifties, made the way they were made then. Nothing is deconstructed and nothing arrives on a board.
What surprises visitors is who is in the room. These are not tourist museums. They hold a steady local clientele, including people who have been coming for thirty years, sitting alongside a younger crowd that shows up because the rooms are good and because the alternative is another patio on the strip.
In high season these rooms fill, and they fill early. From January through April a Friday or Saturday table is worth reserving well ahead. A weeknight is easier but not guaranteed. Summer runs the other way, and some cut back or close through the deep heat, so confirm before you drive over rather than after.
There is a dress code in practice even where there is not one on paper. Nobody is going to turn you away in shorts and a t-shirt, but you will feel it across the table. This is one of the few nights in Palm Springs where dressing for dinner improves the dinner.
The tradeoff is real. This is not modern cooking, the portions are large, and the check is not casual. If your group wants something light and current, go elsewhere and save one of these rooms for a single night. But do save one. There are not many towns left where this kind of restaurant survived at all, and Palm Springs has several of them within a few minutes of each other.