51 Maple Drive #2

Part 1 of 9. How I fell in love with my wife. A paid series from the 365 collection. This first post is available to free subscribers. Subsequent posts will be subscriber only.

Oscar night at Maple Drive. Courtesy of Billboard Magazine

You would either want to go to this restaurant or you were in the wrong city.

The restaurant was tucked away in a residential Beverly Hills neighborhood. By design it was not a place you would stumble upon walking or driving by; it was, deliberately, a restaurant that had to find you, through early word-of-mouth over lunch at Spago or some eager young assistant who had her ear to the ground for that sort of thing.

The fact that the place was enormous inside and yet practically hidden was a key ingredient, part of its industry caché, like not having the restaurant name readily visible as you entered.

On the face of the matchbook was a simple black and white line drawing of a piano and an intertwined lobster. The name of the street – Maple Drive – was printed there. There may have been a street address. There may have been a telephone number.

If you did not valet park your car – which you did – and you approached the place on foot …