Heading: (California Cookery – Clifton’s of Los Angeles)
Author:
Title: Scarce pictorial booklet of famous Los Angeles restaurant, 1951
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published: 1951
Description:

Views of Clifton 's / Pay What You Wish, Dine Free Unless Delighted (Los Angeles, Leon R. Ervin, 1951) 4 x 5.5 ins., 32pp. Color pictorial front cover, photographic rear cover by then co-owner Don Clinton, illustrated throughout with sepia photographs.

Once a chain of restaurants founded during the the 1930s, the last remaining Clifton 's, recently under renovation, is "the oldest surviving cafeteria style eatery in Los Angeles" and "the largest public cafeteria in the world." It became famous in its early days for its policy of aiding Depression-era hungry, giving free food to those who could not pay. The photos in this booklet depict the first two decades of the various Clifton cafeterias, then still owned by the founder 's family, including the different "kitschy" décor at each of 8 separate locations. Clifton 's has since become a California literary legend. Ray Bradbury ate there as a struggling writer, attending meetings of the LA Science Fiction Society that met regularly at the cafeteria, and Charles Bukowski mentioned the "nice" restaurant in one of his novels. Scarce. WorldCat locates only 1 copy, at the California State Library.

Very good.