It's sort of a family joke, but every so often — not that often, but every so often, maybe a few times a year — I get a hankering for a Cobb Salad. For the past decade or more, when that happens I've dragged my wife, or sometimes the whole family, off to South Miami's Beverly Hills Cafe. I don't know how long it's been there, but 15 years at least. It wasn't expensive, and if wasn't super-cheap either, well they made up for it with big portions, fast and attentive service, and very nice hot rolls while you waited. And it was usually busy. Sometimes you had to wait. I even forgave them for expanding into the space formerly occupied by Joe's News, which, pre-internet was the best place to get out-of-town and international newspapers and magazines.
I got that Cobb Salad feeling today, and I took myself off to South Miami, just on the other side of US 1 from my neighborhood, but when I got to the Beverly Hills Cafe, so long a feature of Sunset Ave, there was a sign on the door that they're closed due to the recession. I don't know if it's the whole seven-location chain, or just the one near me, but either way, it was a surprise.
Then again, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. Most times over the years when I went there for lunch on a weekday, the place seemed full of local business types — especially real estate and banking folks. I guess they don't eat out so much these days.
(The parking lot behind the restaurant that used to have a guard and charge by the hour seems to have been taken over by the City of South Miami, and turned into city metered parking, which I suppose is the only tiny silver lining in the story. But they meter even on Sundays.)
Next best Cobb Salad that I know of in the area is at the Coral Gables Diner, in downtown Coral Gables, but it's further away and harder to park, the salad is smaller, not as nice, significantly more expensive ($15!?!), and their honey mustard dressing is lame.
Not to mention a lot of people must have lost their jobs, as the Beverly Hills was pretty big.
Correlation between grading and cobb salad pangs?
Honey mustard? On a cobb salad?? Are you kidding?
What has this world come to!
It’s just the one near you. You’ll have to make your way up to Miami Lakes if you have a hankering for Beverly Hills Cafe in the future.
I remember your taking me there for lunch this year. The salad was very good indeed. Sorry to hear of its demise.
I don’t think it was the recession that closed Beverly Hills Cafe:
The big one:
http://dirtydiningblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/beverly-hills-cafecoral-gables/
and two others:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/beverly-hills-cafe-miami#hrid:TuQuPPq1R5oN3b2lKK8BKQ
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/187/RipOff0187176.htm
Drugs and sex in a restaurant?? Managers preying on teenage workers? Front of the house professionalism with back of the house ass-grab? Heaven Forfend!! Where are my smelling salts!
After my first comment in this thread I googled cobb salad to confirm what I felt to be obvious, i.e. that honey mustard was not the proper dressing, but one of the first recipes, on yahoo, indeed called for honey mustard dressing. Another, from the American Culinary Institute, more properly advised a vinaigrette (to go with the blue cheese, you see) .
So it is clear that Western civilization has fallen farther and faster than I could have ever imagined. Or maybe its just Miami.
Sign of the times:
Liberal South Floridian (insert ethnicity here) more concerned with where to get a cheap meal with large portions in Miami than what happens in Israel.
Mazal Tov.
P.S. Wouldn’t it be nice if Teflon Obamessiah and the next Secretary of State Hillary “Sniper Fire” Clinton had something to say about it?
More than 10 years ago, my brother got a band-aid in his chicken sandwich at the South Miami Beverly Hills Cafe. I never went back.
OyVeh:
Thanks for your racist, painfully dumb comment.
Apparently you are more concerned with what a liberal law professor is doing than what is happening to your little fascist wreaking crew there.
How many pitiful comments in blogs will you need to make once charges are filed against your heros and the trials begin? Better stock up on Cheetos now.
Palin in 2012! That will be the most successful liberal rat-f*ck of the Republicans, in the history of the Republic I would suppose. Maybe in modern history is a safer bet.
So I guess in just a few years I will join you in making dumb little comments on blogs. Palin in 2012! Small town values!! Drill baby drill! Arhghgha!!
Do you remember when she tried to use the drill baby drill line at a solar power company? I was just laughing about that the other day. Not too bright, that one.
Ha ha, keep it up, Sassafras. You’re like a ray of sunshine, you is.