The L.A. Restaurant and Bar Group Building Its Future on the Past

Fans of the film L.A. Confidential know the scene well. Detectives Exley and Vincennes, played by Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey, respectively, meet at the Formosa Cafe to shakedown a gangster. Exley, newer to the strongarm side of detective work, assumes the woman with the gangster is a high-paid Lana Turner look-alike. It happens to be the real Lana Turner, in all her blonde bombshell glory. She, offended, ends up throwing a glass of water in the detective’s face. The Formosa Cafe is exactly the kind of place starlets, gangsters and cops would hang out back in the day. Originally built in 1925, the hideaway on Santa Monica Boulevard has lived through Hollywood’s Golden Age to the punk rock 80’s and into the 21st century. Everyone from John Wayne to Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Bono has holed up here at various times. You could feel that history within its walls. But the place was almost lost. In the 1990s, the Formosa was threatened with destruction, but the city of West Ho