Quote:
Originally Posted by srk1941
The first restaurant I can find in the LA Times advertising pizza was Lucca, at 5th and Western, and that is 1940. The ad tells you how to pronounce this exotic food, "Old as the Roman Coliseum, New as Tomorrow's Sun." It says pizza, available only at Lucca, was introduced to Los Angeles by Bert Rovere. Googling Bert Rovere brings you right back here, to this thread! With pictures too...
Later, there was Pep's Vesuvio in 1943. By 1945, they were advertising that they had served over 50,000 pizzas...
Earlier, there was an article about Milton Berle's favorite foods from 1937, and he does mention pizza there...
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Thanks. I had looked at the available Lucca menus, but took no notice of pizza ovens or the mention of pizza. This is somewhat understandable if I am correct in presuming the menus date to '37. Tangentially, it looks like Lucca tried for mass appeal targeting the upper crust with talk of fine dining and dancing while offering food for the common folk, such pasta dishes.
I have assumed that pizza shops shadowed the proliferation of hamburgers* and other fast food sometime in the late '40s to early '50s -and beyond. That is not to say pizza wasn't sold way-back-when by another less-popular name, e.g., tomato pie.
Curiously, the prewar CDs had a handful of "Pizza" surnames but not one listing, as far as I could tell, for an establishment wishing to be associated with the thin or deep dish comestible. Now I'm hungry.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gsjansen
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Yes, I am aware of the numerous pre-war NLA images of popular LA restaurants advertising hamburgers.
1938 - Wilshire and Cochran "The Glorified Hamburger" -
before the flying saucer.
http://jpg1.lapl.org/00101/00101386.jpg http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...ostcount=11861
ps: For those keeping score, I think the menu depicts another example of those electrified (illuminated) stop signs. Look carefully.
