Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/71

 HOTELS RESTAURANTS CUISINE 49 caravel, to fit it with anchor lamps and nau- tical furnishings and to place on the deck musi- cians in 16th-century capes and the hats of the Spanish minstrel. Sea food is a specialty here, as it is in the Arcadia's grill at Santa Monica where nets and fishing-tackle cover the walls. There is also a piscatorial restaurant on the end of the Bristol Pier at the same famous beach. The Breakers on the Million Dollar (Fraser) Pier is a really sumptuous Santa Monican cafe. The hacienda of the Verdugo family, once the centre of Spanish hospitalities on the ranch which was to become the site of Glendale, has been recon- structed as a restaurant where one tastes Spanish dishes in their highest perfection. The original Verdugo served as a soldier at San Diego and Monterey. In the early years of 1800 he was Mayor of Los Angeles, and came to live on this grant of land at the base of the mountains. It is reached now by motor boulevard or by electric car from Los Angeles. Tables are laid in the sun- flecked pergola or on the beamed and latticed verandah. A successor to this most typical of California's Spanish restaurants has arisen in Los Angeles under the management of the original genius of the Casa Verdugo. But its tinkling music, its cooking and decoration cannot beguile one from the mem- ory of the one at Glendale.