Word: mikes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...been advanced for this. One is that, in the land of Hollywood make-believe, where every honest actor is an impostor at heart, the local royalty welcomed this suave masquerader from the East who could play his part better than they could play theirs. A second explanation is that Mike has always had an illustrious following of loyal and genuinely affectionate friends. The third is that he runs a damn good restaurant. In this he has been given extraordinary support by a very pretty and very smart young woman named Gloria Lister, who came to Romanoff...
Romanoff's early menu was a choice of two main dishes. During the first three months the restaurant consistently lost money. "There was," Mike has since admitted, "the question of credit. Considering my reputation in those days I could do little about it." But when some credit was eventually extended, "We were meticulous about our obligations...
...front room he would leave. Inasmuch as almost every customer considered himself entitled to one of these tables, and no one wanted to be seen alive in the back room, the seating problem became acute. In 1950, Romanoff's lost money for the first time, and Mike decided to move...
...site he chose for his new place was just a block and a half from the old one, but it was south of Wilshire, which meant eating on the wrong side of the boulevard. That disturbed Mike not at all. To raise money he simply assured prospective stockholders that "the south is so much warmer." The new Romanoff's has no back room, but its cheery main dining room is so shaped that everybody can stare at everybody else without much strain. Business, so far, has been double what it was north of the boulevard, even though capacity...
...Romanoff's is no longer strictly a family show. Mike has hired an old friend (and original backer) named Harry Crocker, a member of the pioneer California family, to be his greeter, public relations man and, possibly, alter ego. As Crocker knows everyone in California and Mike finds it difficult to remember any name (he once forgot how to spell one of his own aliases), this move should pay off. And it will be necessary for Mike to have someone like Crocker on hand in California if his latest venture pans out: to do over Duveen's former...