In town for the sales and looking for someplace new and different to eat, shop or visit? Let the TDN help! Following up on our popular Best Bets on the Jersey Shore series during Breeders' Cup week, TDN subscribers now regularly recommend dining and shopping options to our out-of-town readers.

THE DERBY RESTAURANT (Los Angeles, CA - Dining)

233 East Huntington Drive, Arcadia, CA
Phone: (626) 447-2430
Web: www.thederbyarcadia.com
Type: Steakhouse – rich racing history and incredible food

If you’re staying in the Arcadia area, you want to go to The Derby. After you’ve had your salad and the cheese bread, you’re on your own. And if you’re a vegetarian, you’re home and dry. It has wonderful memories, and is a wonderful, old, lined-leather booth steakhouse. That’s the way I like restaurants. It has very wonderful, broad menu, but I guess steak would be the place you’d start. Long, long ago when I was in college, I ran a swim school and the man who now owns it, Chip Sturniolo, attended the school and I taught him how to swim. The last time I brought it up about 10 or 15 years ago, he wasn’t too thrilled, so I wouldn’t mention it! That was a long time ago, and he’s now a respected restauranteur. George Woolf originally owned it before the Sturniolo family. There are so few of those restaurants left in the world that have that kind of history, and it’s impossible to go in there without running into a half-dozen people you know. It’s a gathering place.

-- ROLLIN BAUGH

To see the original PDF with all the writeups from 3/10/08 (Barretts March), click here.

To view other Best Bets, click here.