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Hollywood’s Formosa Cafe Reopens

The Formosa Cafe, a Chinese-themed bar and restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard where the Some Like It Hot cast and crew dined between takes on the Samuel Goldwyn lot, has been fully restored and is now back in business, as Pat Saperstein reports for Variety.

“The restored Formosa re-opened Friday with an impressive $2.4 million restoration by the 1933 Group, which brought classic spots like North Hollywood’s Idle Hour and the Highland Park Bowl back to life. The complete reconstruction included the historic front room and streetcar as well as a new lounge area and the rooftop patio.

At a pre-opening event, documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong showed off a new display of historic lobby cards and movie stills featuring Chinese and Chinese American actors that he curated for the Formosa.

The Formosa was nearly torn down several times, with countless remodels. The last revamp was one of the most misguided, when the vintage Chinese decor was put into storage and everything was painted grey. The 1933 Group’s Bobby Green got involved soon after that, when Vince Jung, the grandson of longtime owner Lem Quon, ended up losing the bar.

In the past, the Formosa wasn’t known for its Americanized Cantonese food, but that is likely to change with the entirely new menu from chef David Kuo of Mar Vista’s Taiwanese restaurant Little Fatty. ‘We wanted to make it more appetizing by today’s standards, but not stray too far away,’ Green explains, ‘We tried David’s food, it was so good and homey, perfect bar food.’

Green says an archivist and architect were hired to determine that the streetcar was the oldest surviving Red Car, dating to 1902. The false ceiling from the streetcar was removed to reveal colored glass windows along the top. Diners now have a view through the streetcar windows into the new back room, where the elaborately carved bar from beloved Chinatown bar Yee Mee Loo has been brought out of storage to become the centerpiece of the new addition.”

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Bring Marilyn Back to the Formosa

The new operators of Formosa Cafe, the Hollywood landmark frequented by the cast and crew of Some Like It Hot, are asking for your help to secure a $150,000 grant from National Geographic for the restoration of its distinctive hub – a room made from a Pacific Electric Red Car Trolley, reports L.A. Weekly. The Formosa Cafe is set to reopen in July 2018. All you have to do is vote for the project online (here) by October 31. Fingers crossed!

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Reprieve for Hollywood’s Formosa

The historic Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard – where the cast and crew of Some Like It Hot regularly dined – closed its doors in January. But as Chris Nichols reports for L.A. Magazine, it is now under new management.

“Six months after the Formosa Café on Santa Monica Boulevard unexpectedly shuttered, the West Hollywood landmark is coming back to life. The ancient Chinese restaurant, known for its famous clientele and appearances in films including L.A. Confidential, will be restored by the 1933 Group and will reopen next summer. Owners Bobby Green, Dimitri Komarov, and Dima Liberman have signed a long-term lease with the owners of the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center, which owns the restaurant property.

The group plans to keep the neon façade, the bar, and the 1902 train car dining room, and it will use vintage photos to guide the restoration of the original red vinyl booths and Chinese lanterns that longtime patrons remember. ‘I want it to have the feel of the 1930s to 1960s,’ said Green. ‘They kept adding and adding to it. I probably don’t need a photo of Johnny Depp on the wall.’ A rooftop deck and other additions made in 2001 will be Benjamin Buttoned to look like they’ve always been there.”

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Hollywood’s Formosa Cafe Closes

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The legendary Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard, where the cast of Some Like It Hot dined between filming scenes at the nearby Samuel Goldwyn Studios, closed its doors last month, as Julia Bennett Rylah reports for LAist. (The restaurant features in the Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential (1997), and was more recently the venue for a 2015 benefit for Hollygrove, the children’s charity named after the orphanage where the young Norma Jeane once lived.)

“Prize-fighter Jimmy Bernstein opened the Red Spot in 1925 inside a defunct red trolly car, near a film studio that would, in the late 1930s, become Samuel Goldwyn Studio. It was a simple lunch counter that slowly grew into a much larger operation, and was renamed the Formosa Cafe around the same time that Samuel Goldwyn moved in, according to KCET. They served Cantonese and American food courtesy of Chef Lem Quon, who took over the joint after Bernstein’s death in 1976. He then enlisted the aid of his stepson, William Jung.

The Formosa was not a fine dining establishment, but it was famous for its famous clientele, which included actors and rock icons from the Golden Age of Hollywood and beyond.

In 1991, Warner Bros. replaced Goldwyn Studio and foresaw the Formosa as a parking lot. As often happens in Los Angeles, a group quickly assembled to save the cafe. Their protest were successful, and the little building remained as the city grew around it.

The worse it got, according to many, came via a remodel in the summer of 2015. The restaurant was gutted and revamped … while the exterior of the building, including its neon green sign, is protected, the inside was not.

However, since everyone apparently hated the remodel so very much, Formosa owners decided to put it back to the way it was. The revert was apparently not enough to save the historic restaurant from closure.”

However, all may not yet be lost, according to LA Magazine.

“The longtime operator of the recently shuttered Formosa Café hasn’t even turned in his keys yet, and the building’s owner is already hearing proposals from new tenants. Vince Jung abruptly closed the restaurant this week. New York-based real estate firm Clarion Partners purchased the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center in 2004 and owns the restaurant property. ‘My goal is to find someone that wants to bring back the history,’ said Gabe Kadosh, vice president of leasing firm Colliers International. ‘This is not going to turn into a Sharky’s or something.’

Jung had been on a month-to-month, below-market lease for many years and made several unsuccessful attempts to revive the business by taking on partners and hosting pop-up nights. One of those partners remodeled the interior without permission from Clarion … Now that the owners have control of the landmark they are seeking a new tenant to restore the Formosa.”

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Party With Marilyn at the Formosa Cafe

Marilyn at a press conference for Some Like It Hot, 1958

If you’re in Los Angeles today, why not get into the Christmas spirit – and help a child in need? The Formosa Cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard (where Marilyn dined while filming Some Like it Hot) is hosting ‘Hollywood’s Hurrah for Hollygrove’, in aid of Hollygrove EMQ Familes First, a non-profit agency named after the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home, where Marilyn herself stayed as a child. Entry is $10, or else bring a new unwrapped toy for a Hollygrove child – more details here.