OPEN: 1973–1985
LOCATION: 8368 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90069
ORIGINAL PHONE: (213) 655-1991
CUISINE: California-French Fusion
DESIGN: C. Taylor
BUILDING STYLE: 1920s house
CURRENTLY: Strip Mall
Patrick Terrail with Joel Grey outside Ma Maison, circa 1980.
THE NAME PATRICK TERRAIL CHOSE FOR HIS MELROSE AVENUE RESTAURANT WAS SIGNIFICANT. Ma Maison (“my house”) was meant to feel welcoming, as if diners were coming to his own home for a meal.
Terrail was bred for the restaurant business. His great-grandfather, M. Burdel, had been the last proprietor of the great Café Anglais in Paris. His grandfather, André Terrail, had made dining at La Tour d’Argent in Paris “a beautiful and graceful ceremony,” according to the press, and his uncle, Claude Terrail, had kept that tradition alive, earning La Tour d’Argent a three-star Michelin rating. Terrail’s father also managed a restaurant, as did his other uncle and two of his aunts.
Terrail’s new undertaking was planned with the utmost attention to detail. Its menus, prepared by chef Elie Cortez, featured simple yet delicious French fare, such as croque-madame sandwiches, peach soup, two-pound lobster tails, and various crepes. The house specialty was brochettes of beef that had been marinated for twenty-four hours. The restaurant had a cheese table for after-dinner tastings. Also on the menu were fondue and raclette, a traditonal cheese dish from Switzerland. All of the pastries, croissants, and breads were made from scratch. French newspapers were flown in for guests to read while they ate.
Located on Melrose Avenue, a few blocks down from La Cienega, Ma Maison was inside a peculiar-looking house situated away from the street. The restaurant’s decor was made up of a hodgepodge of random items. The patio was covered with green artificial turf and decorated with umbrellas and plastic flamingos. Low-hanging air ducts and sliding glass doors completed the feeling that the place had been thrown together. But somehow, it all worked; Terrail had a gift for creating a unique ambiance.
Terrail and Orson Welles, circa 1980.
Crossing the parking lot in front of the restaurant was like walking through a Rolls-Royce or Bentley dealership. Many actors and industry professionals dined at Ma Maison. In 1974, while convalescing at St. John’s Hospital in nearby Santa Monica, Richard Burton grew tired of the hospital food, so he took two nurses and Terence Young, who directed his film The Klansman, to Ma Maison for lunch. Burton ordered “water on the rocks” to drink. In his later years, Orson Welles dined at the restaurant on a weekly basis, dressed all in black and accompanied by his toy poodle, Kiki, and his friend, writer and director Henry Jaglom (who was working as Welles’s unoffical agent at the time). Welles always entered the restaurant via the kitchen, and ate at his favorite table inside the restaurant, never on the patio.
In 1975, Wolfgang Puck moved to Los Angeles to become the chef and part owner of Ma Maison. Seven years later, after publishing his first cookbook based on his Ma Maison recipes, Puck opened Spago on Sunset Boulevard (see page 261). More and more of Ma Maison’s former chefs and staff also established their own eateries: Claude Segal opened Bistango, Mark Peel opened Campanile, and Susan Feniger opened City Restaurant. In 1982, Ma Maison’s sous chef, John Sweeney, was charged with the murder of actress Dominique Dunne. After his prison sentence, Sweeney came back to the area, landing a job at Santa Monica’s Chronicle restaurant. He was fired, however, after Dunne’s mother and brother showed up at the restaurant and handed out flyers to the patrons that read: “The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne.” Sweeney changed his name to John Maura and moved to the northwest.
On November 14, 1985, Ma Maison served its last meal. The 22,000-foot property, which sold for over $2 million, was leveled and a three-story office building was erected in its place. Terrail also sold the rights to the name Ma Maison to a hotelier, who built a restaurant with the same name in his $26 million Sofitel Hotel less than a mile away. Unfortunately, the hotel’s version of Ma Maison failed.
Terrail, who was ready for a change, left Los Angeles for Hogansville, Georgia, where he runs the magazine 85 South (named after the highway that runs through Hogansville). 
Holiday greetings from the Ma Maison staff, 1975.