Originally designed by architect Elmer Grey and given a 1940s glow-up (and an additional wing) by Paul Revere Williams, the hotel’s distinctive pink and green exterior and interior banana-leaf wallpaper are nearly as recognizable as the celebrities who have made it famous. So to, the Polo Lounge, the epitome of Hollywood see-and-be-seen culture. (One memorable Easter brunch, I watched from afar as Beyoncé and Jay-Z introduced a toddler-age Blue Ivy Carter to the Easter Bunny.) It’s to that restaurant — or the Fountain Coffee Room downstairs — you should venture for a taste of Tinseltown that won’t cost you an arm and a leg (room rates start $1,425 a night).
At the former, you can’t get more quintessential than the McCarthy salad (two types of lettuce, diced cubes of grilled chicken, cheddar cheese, bacon, beets, hard boiled eggs, tomato and avocado served with a creamy balsamic dressing), a signature dish named after a millionaire polo player. At the latter, the perfect place for an under-the-radar, feel-like-a-million-bucks breakfast, you won’t go wrong with an order of silver dollar buttermilk pancakes; a stack of nine tiny flapjacks — each the size of a canning jar lid — dotted with three perfectly round marbles of butter, garnished with a sliced strawberry and served with two tiny bottles of Vermont maple syrup.
Whatever your visit to the Pink Palace entails, you’ll stroll in and out beneath a white and green striped awning and along an honest-to-goodness red carpet, an experience that can’t help but connect you — if only momentarily — with the celebrity set that put the place on the pop-culture map.