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More Details Emerge About The Return Of Formosa Cafe
(Photo by Danny Casillas via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)
1933 Group, the restaurant group behind the reopening of Hollywood's iconic Formosa Cafe, sat down with Curbed this week to outline more details about what the reopened space will look like. Earlier this month, they announced to L.A. Magazine their plans to bring Formosa Cafe back to its former glory, but provided few details about the remodel at the time. The group is now more forthcoming about their ideas, and it's clear the guys are determined to usher in a new heyday for Formosa Cafe.
Among all the plans, it's clear the group is prioritizing restoring the interior "to the way it looked to generations of celebrities, gangsters, and lovers of vintage Los Angeles." This means collaborating with Vince Jung, grandson of the original owner, to collect artifacts and stories of how the restaurant used to look and feel. The group will either restore old memorabilia or create new replicas.
The group plans to bring back the secret back room where Mickey Cohen would hold meetings and to renovate the rooftop patio while obscuring the view of the adjacent mall. They also want to introduce a menu that actually tastes good; Bobby Green of 1933 said, "The food was never good here. But it could be. It could be great." The history and the cocktails always take precedence, but he adds "there's no reason the food can't be delicious." What will that look like? "Dim sum-based Cantonese-style cuisine, with new flavors.”
A good portion of the Cafe's exterior is protected under West Hollywood's preservation ordinance, so the group is focusing on bringing back the iconic interior from before the cafe's unpopular remodel in 2015.
The group told Curbed construction will likely take around a year to complete.
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