A Taste of Hollywood, The Story of Ma Maison, Signed by Patrick Terrail
[Signed by Patrick A. Terrail] Terrail, Patrick A. A Taste of Hollywood, The Story of Ma Maison. First Edition. 1999. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is warmly inscribed on the half title page, “From Ma Maison … to your kitchen—Bon Appetit, Much Love, Patrick A. Terrail 2003.” Foreword by Robin Leach.
Among the legendary restaurants of Los Angeles, Ma Maison bridges the gap between old Hollywood glamour and new. With its unlisted phone number and celebrity clientele, it was the height of pretension, but that was offset by its bistro-style informality and discount store-purchased furnishings. Like Mortimer’s in New York, Ma Maison emphasized comfort over self-importance. Its proprietor, Patrick Terrail, was one of the first to take advantage of locally sourced food readily available in California’s Mediterranean climate. Never again could an A-list Hollywood restaurant get away with serving vegetables out of a can. Terrail also discovered Wolfgang Puck, who went on to a level of success unimaginable in 1973 when Ma Maison first opened its doors. This scrapbook style memoir contains a few of the signature recipes, but the real highlights are Terrail’s reminisces and the depictions of various Ma Maison menu covers, with artwork by the most celebrated artists of that era (Robert Rauschenberg and David Hockney, for example). There was a raw, uncensored quality about Terrail, which served him very well until it didn’t. He quarreled with Wolfgang, so he left and opened Spago, taking the celebrities with him. Just as damaging were the injudicious comments Terrail made about his sous chef John Patrick Sweeny, who murdered Dominick Dunne’s daughter, Dominique. They left the false impression Terrail was bankrolling Sweeney’s defense when the record seems to indicate he did no such thing. When Sweeney got off with a slap on the wrist, many took it out on Ma Maison, and with Wolfgang Puck’s departure, the restaurant closed.
“Elizabeth Taylor in all her glory [came to] dine in Ma Maison. When she walked in the front door, the whole restaurant came to a dead stop. You could have heard a pin drop. This was the first and only time the restaurant came to a complete halt. So in comes Elizabeth Taylor and we have to seat her. But the problem was, nobody wanted to leave. Everybody wanted to stick around to see Elizabeth Taylor.”
--Patrick Terrail