In 1940's Los Angeles, there were only two kinds of dining. There was Chasen's and the Brown Derby, and there was everything else. Restaurants like Chasen's were the kind of places where you needed money and connections. You were expected to dress in your finest and eat steaks cooked tableside in oceans of butter.

But then an unknown actor named Harry Lewis and his plucky girlfriend (and soon wife), Marilyn, had an idea. They would open a restaurant that would serve a good hamburger but still be stylish enough that directors, writers and even agents would come to dine with hoi polloi. There would be leather booths and Lowenbrau beer and ice cream from Wil Wright (the Ciao Bella of the time).

''Who would expect lobster bisque, cherries jubilee and French onion soup brought down to the level where one could comfortably dine in blue jeans, no tie or black tie, sitting next to a favorite movie star and at half the price?'' Marilyn writes in her memoir, ''Marilyn, Are You Sure You Can Cook?'' (Ten Speed Press, 2000).

No one did. Almost accidentally (because Marilyn could barely boil water), they hit a nerve. On the corner of Hilldale and Sunset Boulevard, Hamburger Hamlet was born. And so, too, was the lasting American style of democratic dining.

The stars did come to Hamburger Hamlet. Ronald Reagan, Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Short and Dorothy Malone were all regulars. Zachary Scott would show up late at night and order the ''No. 7'' (a hamburger topped with Russian dressing), medium rare, with a glass of milk. For actresses trying to trim their waistlines, Marilyn would prescribe a hamburger with no bun and a side of sauerkraut.

Hamburger Hamlet, which eventually went public and was later sold, may no longer carry the charm of its early years, but its replacements continue to this day. The Hamlet was followed in increasingly pricey iterations by Spago, the Ivy and, most recently, Jar (a chophouse whose wildly popular Mozzarella Monday special is frequented by Jack Black and the agent Bryan Lourd).

The early Hamburger Hamlets embraced the American taste for brown food. ''We ate beef stroganoff, beef stew, steak and hamburgers,'' Marilyn said recently. ''My goodness, no one ate fish.''

But mostly the Hamlet menu was a terrific hodgepodge, cobbled together from Harry and Marilyn's childhoods and travels. The hamburgers were modeled after those at Mawby's in Cleveland, where Marilyn grew up. The Lewises gave them toppings like blue cheese and walnuts, barbecue sauce and chili con carne. (Some 30 years later, Wolfgang Puck's interpretive pizzas with toppings like duck and goat cheese were really just a small leap from here.)

There was the $6,000 baked apple, so named not because of its rarefied artisanal ingredients but because Marilyn camped out at the St. Regis in New York until the chef at Longchamps would give her the recipe. The trip ended up costing $6,000. But probably the most revered dish on the Hamlet menu was the lobster bisque. During the Depression, Marilyn watched her grandmother make the bisque from lobster and shrimp shells and no meat. The Hamlet's version is more heavily fortified, and Marilyn's recipe for it is flawless: creamy and substantial with a subtle sweetness and a flash of heat from the cayenne.

In her memoir, Marilyn, who also succeeded in the fashion business with her label Cardinali and later as a film producer, recounts the ups and downs she and Harry had running Hamburger Hamlet (demonstrators threw tomatoes at one Hamlet to protest the hiring of blacks; Marilyn was kidnapped for a diamond ring -- all 18 karats of it). Included in the book are recipes from the early days. In them, she reveals a talent for recipe writing that, unlike so many other things she did, sadly has not been emulated.

For cherries jubilee, she begins, ''Simple.'' Then she continues: ''First, be sure everyone is in their seats (if the ice cream melts from the heated cherries, it's soup). Open a can of Bing cherries and heat them, juice and all, and add a little Burgundy wine, a touch of port, a slice of lemon, a dash of cinnamon and a dash of sugar. Ladle some of the hot and bubbly mixture over and around two scoops of rich vanilla ice cream in a beautiful heavy glass dish. (I used to get customers off the pay phone or out of the restroom to get them to the table on time before everything melted. It had to be a la minute!)''

originally published online here:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/magazine/22FOOD.html?ex=1117598400&en=b2bac09e49ab3035&ei=5070