Illustration by Lille Allen The 40-year-old, barbecue chicken-flavored legacy of California Pizza Kitchen On Wednesday, March 27, 1985, just before 5 p.m., attorneys Rick Rosenfield and Larry Flax felt terrified.
After taking out $200,000 in loans, getting second mortgages on each of their houses, and raising an additional $350,000 from 22 friends, the two were getting ready to do something they’d never done before. A few months earlier, Flax and Rosenfield had signed a lease (which they had to personally guarantee) near the intersection of South Beverly Drive and Charleville in a part of Beverly Hills that was something of a restaurant graveyard. Now, they were taking a gamble with their personal finances and legal careers, and the moment of truth had come.
At 5 p.m., Rosenfield and Flax opened the doors of California Pizza Kitchen, and as fate would have it, the very first person to enter was actress Shirley MacLaine.
It seemed like a good omen. “Her agent’s office was right upstairs,” Rosenfield tells Eater. MacLaine came in, ordered a coffee, and left.
Luckily, she wasn’t the only customer that day. The space quickly filled up and remained that way for several months. “We didn’t take reservations,” says Suzanne Goin, the James Beard Award-winning chef and restaurateur behind AOC, who worked as a hostess at the original location the summer it opened.
“I remember I would basically gauge by looking at the person how angry they would be if I told them how lo.