An Essential American Restaurant — Well Before Its Tarantino Debut
Musso & Frank Grill in Los Angeles celebrates its 100th anniversary this month
It’s dinnertime at Musso’s, and my friend Len and I are sitting in swivel-mounted captain’s chairs at the counter in the main dining room. Our waiter, Wilberto, who is short and slightly chubby, with a face as round as a Mayan calendar, stretches up to pull a couple of good wine glasses down from the shelf where he stashes them. They’re his own, which he brought in for the use of his regulars (like us) because the restaurant’s glasses have bowls about the size of espresso cups.
Wilberto takes care of us, not just with wine glasses, but with other little amenities — his own steak knives, his own tall pepper grinder, his own linen napkins. When on occasion I order the restaurant’s dense, slightly grainy Welsh rarebit, he gets the kitchen to brown some of the trademark Musso’s sourdough bread in place of the damp white toast most diners get.
Right now, he’s opening our bottle of cabernet (using, of course, his own corkscrew). As he pours, we watch the portly grill man, a few feet away, moving three or four cuts of steak, thick pork chops, skewered lamb’s kidneys, and slabs of the sturdy white-fleshed fish called corvina, a customer favorite, around on the…
