ROMANOFF, THE EXCELLENCE RESTAURANT IN BEVERLY

In December 1940, Prince Michael Romanoff opened his restaurant on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The problem though that his name was not Michael Romanoff and he was not a Russian prince. Arriving from Lithuania at the end of the century his name was Hershel Geguzin and he worked as a trouser press and was still called that way when he arrived in Hollywood in '27. For a boy with this name, making a career in the city would have been almost impossible and for this reason a false identity was created, pretending to be Prince Michael Dimitri Alexandrovich Obolensky Romanoff, nephew of Tsar Nicholas II. With his distinctive ways, mustache and stick, he made his way between the upper class of the city and when Hollywood filmmakers needed advice on the old world Michael presented himself as a great connoisseur of this. A man with strong skills could not help but open a restaurant. He decided to create it thanks to his influential knowledge. The restaurant was frequented by artists such as Darryl Zanuck, Clark Gable, Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock who immediately became regular customers. He developed one of the best French food in the city. Romanoff had established the rule that in his room, the diners, they should all wear a tie; Only Bogart tried to disregard this rule but Romanoff rejected it. Bogart showed up the next day with a very short tie as a sign of rebellion. The 1940s passed with the restaurant constantly full. In the advent of the 1950s Romanoff decided to give his restaurant a new location and moved it from 325 North Rodeo Drive to 140 South Rodeo Drive. The new headquarters had a roof garden, a ballroom, a private room and a much larger dining room than the first. Despite the improvement of the venue, this suffered a decrease in customers during the 1950s; the new generation of artists had not in fact been affected by the personality of the "prince". Romanoff closed on New Year's Eve in 1962.