Pleasures Past

Thank you for the articles on all the restaurants that only remain in our memories (“Remembrances of Restaurants Past,” Sept. 29). The delicious hot fudge sundae with the macaroon wrapped in paper, tucked in the side of your dish at Wil Wright’s for dessert. For dinner, Scandia was my mother and father’s favorite restaurant. The captain and hostess were not as stiff as the article presents them, by any means. When our family walked in, the hostess, Eva, and the captain, Leonard, were warm, welcoming and glad to see our family. We were always treated like royalty. Restaurants like Scandia are gone but can never be forgotten.

--FRANCESS TERRELL LIPPMAN

Los Angeles

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Having always been far more concerned with the consumption of victuals than their preparation, I have long considered the Food section merely a device for making Thursday’s Times almost as ponderous as Sunday’s--until today’s treatise on Los Angeles restaurants gone but not forgotten. What a delightful exercise in gastronomic nostalgia!

Some of my personal favorites were the Sunset House (Sunset and Western)--marvelous chef’s salad in a huge wooden bowl; Bublitchki on the Strip--great beef stroganoff; Carolina Pines on Melrose--irresistible tiny sticky buns. And, all on La Cienega, Solly’s--an excellent steak house; Richlor’s--glorified hamburger steak on a wood disk, surrounded by a garland of mashed potatoes; Sarnez--both night club and eatery; Smith Brothers’ Fish Shanty--entered through a huge gaping piscatorial mouth; Ollie Hammond’s--ideal for a late evening “bite to eat,” and the lamented House of Murphy, notable for superb Caesar salad, black bottom pie and the late bohemian proprietor’s sign “It’s my life--I live it--I love it--Criticism be damned!”

--MARVIN H. LEAF

Santa Monica