The Polo Lounge

There are restaurants you visit because the food is extraordinary, and there are restaurants you visit because the room itself is a piece of American cultural history. The Polo Lounge is the rare example that manages to be both. Since Will Rogers's polo-playing friends began gathering here in the 1930s, the list of people who have sat in these booths reads like a century of Hollywood at its apex.

The pink-banana-leaf wallpaper, the deep green banquettes, the lighting dialed to the frequency that makes everyone look well-rested — these are not design accidents but the accumulated decisions of a room that understands its purpose perfectly. The food is California-inflected American: impeccably sourced, generous, uncomplicated. The McCarthy Salad is an institution.

Book well in advance for breakfast or lunch. Dinner is more obtainable but loses something without the morning light and the sense that the entire entertainment industry is conducting its business within earshot.