Bill Dillman stepped into the restaurant business in the 1950s as a partner with James Karam in Karam’s, the classiest restaurant on the Balboa Peninsula of Newport Beach, California. Karam, a Lebanese-American restaurateur from Long Island, New York, had opened the eponymous establishment with his wife, Lucille, in 1952, and it was an instant hit. Every night, at the corner of Main Street and Balboa Boulevard, Karam’s tuxedoed parking valets attended to the cars of Newport Beach’s wealthy and well-to-do, and inside the restaurant’s patrons could dine and drink in similar style. Prime rib was the specialty, with three different cuts on the menu and a huge slab of well-marbled beef prominently displayed in a case in the dining room.
In 1958 Dillman bought out Karam and affixed his own name to the restaurant. (Jimmy Karam would go on to open a brand-new Karam’s in a strikingly modern building at 501 30th Street.) Prime rib was the specialty at Dillman’s, with three different cuts on the menu and a huge slab of well-marbled beef prominently displayed in a case in the dining room.
From the start Dillman’s was a family operation. Bill’s son, Max, had been involved in the restaurant from the beginning, and he took over when his father died in 1976. (Some years later Max would put his son, Jim, in charge.)
With its circular see-and-be-seen bar and clubby atmosphere (aquarium, leatherette booths, and nautical pictures on the brick walls), Dillman’s was one of Newport Beach’s choicest hangouts, with lots and lots of regulars and a fair number of celebrities dropping in from time to time (chief among them actor John Wayne, whose lived just across Newport Bay on Bayshore Drive).
Until the late 1980s Dillman’s featured “Wild Game Nights” on the first Friday and Saturday of each month, with dishes made from such exotic meats as bear, buffalo, hippopotamus, llama, lion, wild boar, and wild turkey as well as alligator, chuka (a type of partridge), guinea hen, mallard duck, pheasant, quail, rattlesnake, and venison. (When a reporter once asked Max Dillman about the menu items, he offered that the lion meat tasted “a lot like pork” and that the hippopotamus steaks were “pretty tough.”
The Dillman family bowed out of the business in 1995 when Michael Kim became the restaurant’s new owner. Four years later it became the ShoreHouse Cafe, which remained there until 2012, when it closed its doors less than a year after filing for bankruptcy. It later became the Newport Beach outpost of Cruisers, a pizza restaurant.
A longtime favorite at Dillman’s was the Garlic Cream Dressing it served with salads. Here’s the recipe.
Garlic Cream Dressing
A legendary recipe from Dillman’s in Newport Beach, California
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Loading...A longtime favorite at Dillman’s restaurant in Newport Beach, California, was the Garlic Cream Dressing it served with salads. Here’s the recipe.
Ingredients
- 2 cups mayonnaise
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1 small head of garlic (10 to 15 cloves)
- 1 bunch scallions, chopped
- Salt to taste
- White pepper to taste
- Dash of hot pepper sauce
- Pinch of dry mustard
- Pinch of garlic salt (optional)
Instructions
Separate the head of garlic into cloves; peel the cloves and put them through a garlic press.
In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and whisk until blended. Taste and adjust salt if needed. Refrigerate, covered, up to 2 weeks.
Notes
Roger Early, the chef at Dillman's at the time this recipe was made public, pointed out that the dressing will separate on standing and should be whisked again before serving. He recommended using the dressing within a couple of days, noting that the garlic flavor grows stronger the longer it is stored.
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