Word: romanoff
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THERE was a day, however, when Romanoff's was faced with A ruin by the very snob appeal that had helped make it famous. The original restaurant, which had a front room and a back room, in time became such a reviewing stand for the great that if any eminent patron was not given one of the five tables in the 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...
...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 is less. This year the net will probably...
Robert Benchley once said that "Romanoff's is the only place I know where the customer isn't always right." Chronic bores, cut-raters and devotees of the club sandwich have sometimes been asked to take their custom elsewhere, and more than once a letter of complaint has been tacked on the wall of the men's room...
...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...
...same accent he used for credit in Manhattan speakeasies 20 years ago. He cannot be libeled by caricature. The close-cropped, greying hair, the imperiously immobile face, the thin mustache and the prominent nose that terminates in a kind of bulb are even more of a Romanoff trademark than his coat of arms. His most recent crest (supplanting an elaborate compound that included a sheaf of wheat, a gargoyle and a Martini glass) is a chaste pair of back-to-back R's topped by a regal crown...