I’ve been researching the restaurants of Los Angeles for quite some time now, and am always delighted to find a new one. Especially when it’s a chicken dinner restaurant because I always find myself thinking of Mildred Pierce. I’m sure Mildred’s chicken was very good, but could it hold a match to the Ferncroft Inn who made the bold claim that it’s the place “where chicken melts in your mouth”? At 670 S. San Vicente Blvd it probably benefited from being close to the popular Carthay Circle Theatre.
Here’s the menu:
Also this that someone posted on my Facebook page:
That address is now home to a Big 5 sporting goods store whose chicken dinners, I’d imagine, don’t melt in the mouth in quite the same way. This image is from August 2022.
Sounds yummy!
I found it interesting that the fancier dinners had sherbet, and, then, lower, ice cream or pie. Sherbet was often a palate cleanser at formal restaurants back in the day. Interesting that a chicken place would have that, too.
Think there might be a bottle of that 20-cent house brand salad dressing left over out there somewhere?
Helen Foster’s restaurant was at Wilshire and 2nd Street in Santa Monica… same location as Bob Burns, before that venerable place. Our family went there frequently, (late 1940s, early 1950s?) when I was a child. I cannot find any references to it today. Better luck.
We used to got to Bob Burns in the 60s. It was a very traditional “fancy” restaurant, but I really liked that they had those really high backed chairs, so if you were seated at a table in the middle of the room, you still felt as though you were private and secluded.
I loved their Cesar salad and duck.