A classic malted milkshake at Beverly Hills Fountain Coffee Room.
Huzzah! Today is my 8th blogiversary. And this post here is a looong time in the making because back on August 2, 2005 I blogged about Beverly Hills Hotel Fountain Coffee Room. My first blog post ever. Back then it was called Soda Fountain Shoppe and had just been restored to its 1950s glory. I hadn’t even visited the fancy coffee shop, which is located on the floor beneath the Polo Lounge in the hotel, but liked a writeup on it by now-defunct site Girl’s Guide to LA. “For not only is it one of the fanciest fountain shoppes around, it’s also one of the best,” they wrote. I liked that writeup so much that I used it in my post which was comprised of just two lines and a huge excerpt. Heh.
Back then I thought it perfectly acceptable to write about a place I never even tried. In fact at first my blog was merely a collection of reviews of places I wanted to check out. A way to keep track of things. It wasn’t until commenters in those early posts told me it would mean much more if I added my own experiences to my post that I got over my shyness.
Anyway, cut to eight years later and even though I’ve learned to write from my own experiences, figured out SEO and social media and even made a name for myself for telling it like it is, I STILL hadn’t checked out the coffee shop. I kept meaning to but took it for granted that it would always be there. And, hey look! It is!
Beverly Hills Hotel Fountain Coffee Room Buildup
So yesterday, I finally dropped by. At 4:30pm on a Thursday, the restaurant was dead. There was only one suit-wearing guy sitting at the far end of the counter so I sat on the opposite end by the entrance to get a good view of the small space. It truly is the fanciest diner/coffee shop I’ve ever seen. And the cleanest. I felt like I was transported to that Mad Men episode when Don Draper visited L.A. In fact, WAS that Don Draper sitting at the other end of the counter? He did hide when I started to take pictures of my milkshake. Hmm.
The space is small with bar stools around the cursive-W-shaped counter as the only seating. The walls are covered in painted mid-century-style palm fronds and there isn’t a separate kitchen but a grill behind the counter! So quaint. But you don’t get greasy grilled cheese sandwiches here. The menu is surprisingly pricey for a diner but I guess not surprising for Beverly Hills. Here, you can get a sour cream and caviar omelette for $16, a hamburger for $19…or a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon for $15. The counterperson said that the popular and unique items on the menu are the Grilled Russian on Rye sandwich with turkey, ham, Swiss cheese, cole slaw and Russian dressing and the Novogroder turkey burger. They even have cocktails on the menu! Start your morning with a $17 Ramos Gin Fizz. I was skeptical about how a cocktail at a diner would taste but now realize they just get them from the Polo Lounge upstairs.
But I was here for the ice cream, which they make themselves. The ice cream offerings consist of the basics you’d find at a soda fountain: root beer float, malted milkshake, sundae. Only the Coca Cola Float and Fresh Orange Freeze were new to me. But I decided to go for the classic malted milkshake. There are only four ice cream flavors available here: strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and coffee. So I went for the coffee malted. As you can see from the above photo, the milkshake itself isn’t particularly fancy. And I’m not an expert in malted milkshakes, this being my first one, but it was a lot thinner than ice cream milkshakes I’ve tasted in the past. And a bit icy. Hm, not for me.
So yeah, I wouldn’t say Fountain Coffee Room is the best one around, at least for ice cream, but it is definitely still the fanciest. I really want to come back to try their “Fit and Healthy” breakfast dishes which are served all day! That vegetarian Eggs Benedict with steamed spinach sounds goood! Maybe another day when I feel like dressing up I’ll swing by again. Since it’s all counter space it really is perfect for when you want to just dine alone and read the paper with a cup of coffee.
Anyway, thanks for making it this far with me and here’s to eight more years! Yikes!
9641 Sunset Boulevard
Beverly Hills, California 90210 (map)
(310) 276-2251
Open daily 7am-7pm