|
![]() |
Dudley and company seem to have liked naming their restaurants after their street addresses: as you might expect, Maple Drive restaurant is on Maple Drive. It's located in an unlikely spot, inside a high-tech office complex. When the restaurant opened in 1990, the chef from 72 Market Street, Leonard Schwartz, came along and brought his famous meatloaf and "kickass chili" with him. They are still two of the most popular items on the menu. When it first opened, it was the ultimate insider restaurant, and tables were hard to come by. (Celebs such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres & Anne Heche tend to come & go through the entrance in the back, and prefer to sit in the spacious booths against the back wall.) But that hectic pace has cooled a bit recently, and you can probably get a seat on most nights, although it remains a very trendy spot, with (as Zagat puts it) "a great bar scene."
For several years,
on the night of the Academy Awards,
Elton John
hosted a major post-Oscar party here at Maple Drive, which rivaled the
old parties at Spago and the new ones
at Morton's as the place be on Oscar
Night. Some of the stars who showed up at Maple Drive after the 1997 awards
included Sandra Bullock,
Brad Pitt,
Nicolas Cage,
Jim Carrey,
Ed Harris,
Steven Spielberg,
Whoopi Goldberg,
Sean Penn, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Shue, Steve Martin, Ed Harris, Stevie Wonder, Emma Thompson, Patricia Arquette, Prince and Elton himself. In 1998, however, Elton decided to move the party to the new Spago Beverly Hills.
The menu features
a California / Mediterranean cuisine with American dishes similar to 72
Market Street (kick-ass chili, crab cakes, chops, good desserts) at roughly
the same high prices (about $85 for dinner for two), in a modern, elegent
setting.
[You
can see the restaurant's menu online at: |
|
Click Here to Return to the Main Menu
Copyright © 1999-2022-Gary Wayne
All Rights Reserved
This webpage is not associated
with any business described in the article above, and does not constitute
an
endorsement of this or any other business. The photos of celebrities on
this page also do not constitute
endorsements by them of any kind, and are used by the author solely to
illustrate this online article.
(Click here
to read other disclaimers)