The Creamy Vintage Pasta Bake Dish That Deserves A Big Revival

When we reminisce about food from the 1950s, it's usually not with fond nostalgia. Culinary trends of the day were downright weird, including molds combining fruit and meat — vintage recipes used so much gelatin — and other experiments that by today's standards are totally unappealing.

But once in a while, a recipe from days gone by resurfaces that deserves to make a comeback. Noodles Romanoff is one of them. The sumptuous dish combines tender egg noodles with a rich cream sauce made with butter, sour cream, and Parmesan cheese, and is baked until bubbling hot. At once decadent yet humble, noodles Romanoff was the signature dish of Hollywood hotspot, you guessed it, Romanoff's.

Romanoff's was open from 1939 to 1962 in Beverly Hills' perpetually cool zip code, 90210, and was one of the most sought-after reservations in town. At this original A-Listers restaurant, paparazzi shot photos of stars like Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Frank Sinatra — even the famous photo of Sophia Loren giving Jayne Mansfield the side-eye was taken there. Proprietor Michael Romanoff claimed to be a distant cousin of Russia's assassinated royal, Tsar Nicholas II, and the Romanov family. He used that élan to establish his eponymous restaurant, spawning the noodle dish that became a sensation in households from coast to coast.

Romanoff's served dishes like crab-stuffed tomatoes, eggs Benedict, and Waldorf salad, along with old-school foods that originated at the Waldorf Astoria decades earlier, but it was noodles Romanoff that was the restaurant's biggest hit. Because the dish was on every celebrity's table, it was frequently mentioned in the gossip columns, and national food companies took notice.

After Romanoff's closed, Stouffer's served noodles Romanoff at its elegant glass-enclosed restaurant, Top of the Rock, located on the 41st floor of the Prudential Building in Chicago. It later became part of the lineup of many brands' frozen foods. Betty Crocker and Pasta Roni both had boxed versions of the dish that could be on the table in minutes. Betty Crocker's packaging even had lettering similar to that of the restaurant's sign and menu, along with TV ads that touted noodles Romanoff as food fit for nobility. 

As it turns out, Michael Romanoff was no royal: His real name was Harry F. Gerguson (although he changed it to that from his birth name of Hershel Geguzin), and he was born to Lithuanian immigrants. Possibly the most notorious imposter of the time, he was a hit in Hollywood, where almost everyone is masquerading as someone else. Nevertheless, noodles Romanoff is easy to make by mixing thick noodles in a creamy sauce. If you want to jazz it up, you can add pieces of bacon, peas, broccoli, mushrooms, or sun-dried tomatoes. And many recipes add cottage cheese. Or, if you're a die-hard traditionalist, you may want to try a dish that was developed for real Russian nobility: The French-influenced beef Stroganoff.