Game 57: Arthur Lyons - Beef Stroganoff

Nothing about Palm Springs, located in the Sonoran Desert about 3 hours east of Los Angeles, screams “noir.” Unlike the city it sprung from, a sprawling insidious metropolis whose palm trees and clear skies hide a seedy underbelly that’s inspired noir novelists and filmmakers for decades, the beautiful resort getaway of Palm Springs has rarely been used as a symbol for the cynical tandem of greed and power laying underneath it's perfectly paved sidewalks. It’s simply a place where all are welcome -- tourists, snowbirds, outdoor enthusiasts, bachelorette parties, and the LGBTQ community -- provided you have enough money to stay at its classic hotels or buy one of its iconic mid-century modern houses. But one Palm Springs mainstay brought the noir aesthetic to his hometown through a line of books, a film festival, and his family restaurant. That man was the late Arthur Lyons.

Lyons was born in Los Angeles in 1946, a time period that would inform most of the classic noir films and novels, and moved to Palm Springs as a teenager. There his father and uncle opened up a restaurant, Lyons English Grille, that operated for 50+ years before its recent closing. The dark, moody interior design complete with stained glass windows and red leather booths looks like a DTLA establishment that an L.A. private eye would visit to question a crooked cop, not what you envision when Yelping the best dinner spots in Palm Springs.

While working in his family’s restaurant, Lyons published his first book, The Second Coming, a nonfiction look at Satanism and cults in America. But it was his next book, The Dead Are Discreet that launched his career as a noir novelist. Starring Jacob Asch, a Jewish journalist for the fictional Los Angeles Chronicle who becomes a P.I. after doing 6 months for refusing to reveal a source, these books “explored the monetary and cultural extremes of Palm Springs, but… also highlighted the darker edges of human behavior” according to J. Kingston Pierce. Lyons wrote 11 books starring his protagonist and even had one of them adapted into a straight-to-TV 1986 movie starring Eric Roberts, Beverly D'Angelo, Johnny Depp, Dan Hedaya, and Eddie Bunker.

With the success of his writing career and his stake in his family restaurant, Lyons became a local celebrity in Palm Springs. He served on the Palm Springs City Council from 1992-1996 and published one last Jacob Asch novel during his term. But the last book he wrote, 1997’s nonfiction Death on the Cheap: The Lost B Movies of Film Noir, laid the path for the final decade of his life. In 2000, he co-founded the Palm Springs Film Noir Festival, an annual event that celebrates both classic and lesser-known noir films, with a heavy emphasis on the latter. Lyons died in 2008, but the film festival, now known as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, will celebrate its 20th anniversary later this May.

As for the Lakers connection? Before AEG built the Lakers a training facility in El Segundo at the turn of the century, the Lakers trained all the way out in Palm Springs. I couldn’t find any info on Lyons and the Lakers, but I can see Dr. Jerry Buss ending -- or if we’re being honest, beginning his nights -- with a bottle of burgundy wine and the following beef stroganoff dish at Lyons English Grille.

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Beef Stroganoff

1 ½ pounds filet mignon

1 clove minced garlic

1 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoons diced onion

½ lb sliced mushrooms

¼ cup burgundy wine

1 cup sour cream

Corn starch

Salt and pepper

Cut filet into ½ inch strips and pound until thin. Saute garlic in butter for one minute. Add onions and saute for two minutes. Add mushrooms to pan and continue to saute for five minutes longer. Stir in wine and salt and pepper to taste. Add sour cream, continue to cook for five minutes, until mixture is thin and hot. Thicken mixture with corn starch. Serve over rice or spinach noodles.

“Voila! A gourmet dish that can be whipped up in 15 minutes and that can be frozen.”

15 minutes is a bit of an exaggeration, but this is still an easy dish to prepare. Ask any butcher or beef enthusiast and they’ll tell you that filet mignon, despite being the most expensive cut on the menu, is one of the most overrated pieces of a former cow. Why? The lack of marbling leads to a lack of flavor. And if I’m not going to order a cut of filet mignon at a steakhouse, I’m sure as hell not going to spend money on filet mignon when it’s going to be drenched in a stroganoff sauce. At least not until Goldstein and Gasol gets sponsored!

You might have noticed that Lyons forgets to mention when to cook the meat in this recipe. This is a common problem of the 1985 World Champion Lakers Are Cookin’ Family Cookbook: A total lack of copy editing. So I improvised and seared my beef before starting the sauce, then added the meat halfway through the cooking of the mushrooms. The end result was good, but nothing to write a noir novel about. If you want to make a beef stroganoff, I recommend a recipe that doesn’t forget a key step in the process.