Instagram Twitter Youtube
Join
Renew

Tag: Restaurants

Posted on

From Rossi’s to CdM Restaurant

Picture of Tom Heffernan

Tom Heffernan

A postcard of Rossi's Cafe, then located at 2325 East Coast Hwy

In his column ‘The Verdict’, Judge Robert Gardner called Rossi’s Cafe “the finest Italian restaurant I have ever patronized.” He added, “Mama Rossi featured her pickled mushrooms, which had to be tasted to be believed. I have always thought that her pickled mushrooms were particularly good because Mama Rossi used wild mushrooms she picked on the hills surrounding the present Fashion Island.”

CdM Restaurant is now at that location today.
Rossi’s was located where CdM Restaurant is today at 2325 E. Coast Highway. According to an OC Register article, this location has also been the home of Matteo’s, Brio, Garlic Joe’s, Tiramisu, Belle Theresa, and more recently, The Crow Bar.
Posted on

From Hurley Bell to Five Crowns

Picture of Tom Heffernan

Tom Heffernan

Five Crowns, 2018

Corona Del Mar’s oldest restaurant, known today as Five Crowns was built in 1936 by Matilda “Tillie” Lemon MacCulloch.  An American wife of a wealthy Scotsman, she lived in England but had grown up visiting Southern California as a child.  She modeled it after Ye Olde Bell, an inn at Hurley-on-Thames, 35 miles west of London, England and called it the Hurley Bell.   Local architect Shelby Coon used photographs of the inn to design it.  Originally planned to be an inn, the MacCullochs ended up making it their home.  

Matilda MacCulloch, 1900. (Credit: Marguerite Atkinson Collection, Sherman Library.)
​Shelton McHenry and Bruce Warren who ran the Tail o’ the Cock Restaurant in Los Angeles leased it for a new location in 1943 but it would only last for 3 years.  Tillie and her daughter would revitalize the Hurley Inn for a few years until Tillie’s death in 1948.  
Ye Olde Bell Inn in Hurley-on-Thames
Ye Olde Bell Inn in Hurley-on-Thames

After leasing it to a series of unsuccessful entrepreneurs, the restaurant was leased to the Frank and Van de Kamp families and was re-modeled and re-opened as the Five Crowns in 1965.  It continues to operate today, having been purchased by Lawry’s Food Corporation in the 1980s.