The Original Spanish Kitchen was a restaurant on Beverly Boulevard in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, California, USA, that became the subject of an urban legend starting in the early 1960s. The restaurant, which opened in the mid-1940s, was a popular eating spot until it closed in September 1961.
Following its closure, the building's contents were left intact for years afterward, the tables remaining set with full place settings and the lunch counter fully stocked with coffeemakers and cooking utensils. The restaurant's sudden closure gave rise to speculation and the subsequent urban legend that the owners, who lived in an apartment above the restaurant, were murdered at the hands of organized crime. The truth was more prosaic, according to a 1986 article in Tables magazine by reporter Don Ray. He determined that the owner had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and the restaurant had been shuttered by his wife after she found that she was not up to the task of running it.
After nearly forty years in limbo, the building became the site of an upscale beauty salon in 2005. The Original Spanish Kitchen's original vertical electric sign, which had become a Los Angeles landmark over the years, was modified to read simply "SPA", a reference to the new business on the location. Another Spanish Kitchen on the restaurant row section of nearby La Cienega Boulevard has a replica of the Original Spanish Kitchen sign on the side of its building, although this is not the original building. The replica of the Spanish Kitchen closed in July, 2012.
Famous quotes containing the words original, spanish and/or kitchen:
“The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock.”
—Oscar Solomon Straus (1850–1926)
“Ferdinand De Soto, sleeping
In the river, never heard
Four-and-twenty Spanish hooves
Fling off their iron and cut the green,
Leaving circles new and clean
While overhead the wing-tips whirred.”
—Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)
“I went into the kitchen and got halfway to the phone before I realized that I couldn’t call her.... A lot of people who lost a mother or father or husband or wife will tell you that they find themselves almost talking out loud. I do that a lot.”
—Bill Clinton (b. 1946)