10 Facts About Brown Derby

Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles, California.

The original Brown Derby restaurants had closed or had been converted to other uses by the 1980s, though a Disney-backed Brown Derby national franchising program revived the brand in the 21st century.

The Brown Derby name originated from a Malverne, New York-based restaurant of the same name that had been a hang-out for vaudevillians in the 1920s.

Hollywood Brown Derby is the purported birthplace of the Cobb salad, which was said to have been hastily arranged from leftovers by owner Bob Cobb for showman and theater owner Sid Grauman.

Hollywood Brown Derby closed for the last time at its original site on April 3,1985, as a result of a lease dispute.

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Brown Derby was prominently featured in the 1996 film Swingers, in the scene where Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn's characters bypass the line at the front door, enter through the service entrance, walk through the kitchen, and into the club where Big Bad Voodoo Daddy are playing on the stage, in an ode to the classic restaurant scene with Ray Liotta in Scorsese's Goodfellas.

An independent coalition called "Save The Brown Derby" fought to prevent the demolition, and, on May 19,2006, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate the entire structure an official Historic Cultural Monument of the City of Los Angeles.

In 2012, the Los Feliz Brown Derby space is occupied by the gastropub Mess Hall Kitchen and a Chase bank, dividing the dome in half between the businesses.

Fifth Brown Derby opened in 1955 at the Broadway Crenshaw Shopping Center, now known as the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Brown Derby began a licensing program in 1987, with an agreement with The Walt Disney Company for a replica of the original Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant at the new Disney-MGM Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.