My book club just finished “No One Here Gets Out Alive”, the 1980 biography of rock icon Jim Morrison. It was a little off the beaten path for our club, but it was certainly an interesting, shocking and entertaining read. There is NO ONE who embodies the Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll era of the 1960s and early 1970s more than Morrison. He drank, tripped, and terrorized his way through the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles during the height of his fame and then did the same in the Marais district of Paris before his untimely death at age 27, in the same year as other rock geniuses Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, also both age 27.
While Jim’s standard drink was a whiskey with a beer shooter – appropriate as the Doors got their start at the Whiskey A Go-Go in Los Angeles – I think it’s even more interesting to document his favorite restaurants. While Jim is best known as being the shirtless, skin tight leather pants wearing, self described ‘erotic politician’, he was known to love food and was often asked to lose weight by Elektra records during his pudgier periods to return to the waify sex symbol he was known and loved for.
Jim lived in Venice Beach before the Doors catapulted into fame. One of his favorite places there was Olivia’s Place where he could get a heaping plate of short ribs, beans and cornbread for 85 cents or a steak dinner for $1.25. Jim immortalized the place in the song Soul Kitchen in his 1967 debut album. According to Doors drummer, Jim Densmore, it looked like an Amtrak dining car was parked on the beach on the corner of Main Street and Ocean Park Drive. It was the regular haunt of UCLA film students, which Jim was for a short while. It was demolished in 1973 two years after Jim died.
Jim’s supposedly fave bar in Venice was Hanino Café opened in 1969. It is still standing and known for its great burger on a sesame studded bun with standard toppings like lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, mustard and relish, and add ons like cheddar, swiss, bacon and chili (which makes it an LA ‘chili size’ , invented at Ptomaine Tommy’s in LA in 1913).
The favorite Santa Monica Boulevard restaurant of Morrison’s was Barney’s Beanery, the third oldest restaurant in Los Angeles, founded in 1927 by John Barney Anthony who got his culinary start serving chili burgers and onion soup to his fellow soldiers. Morrison was seen here with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, a hauntingly ominous meetup. Janis would end up beating Morrison on the head with a bottle of Southern Comfort that night. Barney’s is still open, known for its comfort food and staggering 1000 menu items with 45 varieties of chili and 20 different burgers.
Another Sunset Strip fave in West Hollywood is the Cock and Bull, where Jim ate a lot and which was a hangout for the LA rock scene. After one dinner there with three bottles of scotch he ended up directing traffic like a matador with his coat on the strip as if the bulls of Pamplona were thundering past.
Jim ordered a lot of room service at one of his Sunset abodes, the Chateau Marmont, where he fell hanging off his balcony, bounced off the roof of a shed and walked away fine. During the height of his binges before leaving for Paris, if he was hungry, he’d drink a Singapore Sling or some other tropical drink with fruit.
Other LA joints where Jim ate and imbibed were the Garden District, the Phone Booth, the Palms, the Trubador (which he was banned from), and the Lucky U Café.
When they took the Doors’ boat to Catalina , coked out and drunk, they frequented Mikes Café and had breakfasts of scrambled eggs, sausage, sardines, olives, potatoes, chili, cold cuts, toast and beer, beer, beer!
When Jim was in New York he loved eating at the iconic restaurants Mama Leoni’s and the great German restaurant Luchows.
While in New Orleans, which was his last public appearance he ordered watermelon from room service and ate frog legs and hush puppies with his band mates.
While in Paris in the last year of his life, Jim was a regular at Alexander’s, a restaurant near the Hotel Georges V, which he accompanied with Bloody Marys and Chevas Regal Scotch. Ha and his wife could also be seen eating at Le Coupole, and the Café de Flore.
After a binger in the Marais, his wife Pameloa ordered breakfast for Jim at a Latin Quarter café, spaghetti and milk, to ‘line his stomach.’
For his last meal on July 2, 1970, he ate sweet and sour chicken and beer at one of the late night outdoor cafes on the Rue San Antoine near their flat with his wife Pamela and Alan Ronay. He took Pamela home, went out by himself and was found dead in the bathtub the next morning. No autopsy was done, but the official cause was heart attack. Many conspiracy theories of other causes from heroin OD to faking it and living incognito popped up over the next decades, but Jim was cemented into rock and roll legend, gaining entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
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