The first Willard’s restaurant opened in 1928 at 9625 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles.

Photographs show a location that looks like a country house with two giant signs above it, one saying W and another spelling out Willard’s and the phrase – far-famed chicken steak dinners.

The West Pico location, and another that opened on Loz Feliz Boulevard, were originally owned by Lee Willard. His photograph was on many of the restaurants’ postcards handed out to guests and he looks like a jolly fellow with a sense of humor.

This was evident in the wording on the postcards. Just had dinner at Willard’s, the postcard said, and then there were boxes where customers could rate the food as exceptionally good, good, fair, horrible.

The food on this menu certainly wasn’t enticing. Starters included turnip juice, mains involved a rabbit and horse stew and dessert was ice-cream with mustard. Of course, it was a joke menu – fashionable at the time. There was also the joke: ‘a la carte or by bus.’

Willard’s was mostly a chicken restaurant – one of its mottos was ‘never more than 24 hours from farm to table.’

In the early 1940s, legendary film director Cecil B De Mille bought the Willard’s location in Los Feliz and turned it into a Brown Derby restaurant. The influential architect Wayne McAllister (1907-2000), a leader in Googie-style design who created many of Southern California’s mid-century drive-ins and coffee shops, created the building’s stylish dome depicting a brown Derby hat.

The restaurant, open 24 hours a day, remained popular until the 1960s. McAllister’s building still exists – it is now the Messhall Kitchen.

The original Willard’s was in business until at least 1948, judging by our research, but has long since been demolished.

Courtesy Bob Reiss.