Stephen McGinty: Popping across the Border for a taste of Hollywood history

Invitations to dine at the Dorchester are rarer still, while invitations to dine at the Dorchester when it is transformed into an outpost of the celebrated Polo Lounge in Hollywood are so rare that it is actually recorded in the Bible as a grave sin to refuse, punishable by the confiscation of a gaggle of goats and three bushels of wheat. (Go on, check it out in Leviticus 4:16, just remember to re-arrange the letters to spell "happiness is a warm tummy" and interpret accordingly. I do.)

So I hopped on the next Virgin train and wi-fied my way south, happy thoughts of my last visit to the Polo Lounge puffing out of my head and trailing down the aisle like smoke clouds. It was my tenth wedding anniversary and we had splashed out on a weekend at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the "pink palace" as it is known, which sits off Sunset Boulevard and, having been built in 1912, generously lent its name to the affluent city whose mansions soon sprung up around about.

The snug little restaurant that sat just off the lobby was originally called El Jardin, in tribute to the oak trees that shaded diners on the outside patio, but sometime during the 1940s it became a regular hangout for a group of polo players, including Spencer Tracy, and a new name evolved.

The Polo Lounge has a carpet so deep that the retrieval of dropped coins requires a metal detector. The tables are candy pink, the curved booths plush green leather, and a piano player is always on duty to perform a favoured ditty. (I requested Metallica's Enter Sandman.) The food is, well, foody: wonderful, tasty, hot and chewy. But you don't come to the Polo Lounge for food – well, obviously you do, they grow uncomfortable if you just sit around, but really you come for its history.

The restaurant is a Hollywood institution. Open at 7am for the studio heads' power breakfasts and closing at 1:30am after the latest of suppers, its booths have been graced by the greats. In the days before mobile phones, it was popular as each booth came equipped with a telephone plug allowing calls, like the Cobb salads, to be brought straight to the table. It was from here Marlene Dietrich was evicted for wearing slacks, and where gentlemen, even Frank Sinatra, were required to take off their hats – until, that is, Steven Spielberg decided he preferred to keep his baseball cap on. Rules, a great restaurant appreciates, are there to be broken by a select few. For me, atmosphere and the ghosts of patrons past are the draw for any establishment.

At the Dorchester, which overlooks Hyde Park in London, they hadn't quite managed to import the bright blue skies of California. The heavens were a gloomy grey but guests were greeted with a floral display of a polo horse at the hotel's entrance and I was happily confident that as I had arrived with a healthy appetite I was indeed doing God's work. The reason for the Polo Lounge's brief residence was that they are now sister hotels, and with the likes of the Le Meurice in Paris (Salvador Dali's favourite) all now rest under the shady umbrella of the Dorchester Collection. While it would have been impossible, or at least exceedingly expensive, to reconfigure the lobby with pink and green booths, they had sprinkled the menu with Polo Lounge classics and imported Micha Paloff, the director of Polo Lounge Operations, for the duration. Witty, genial and graced with an encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood history, he was practically my constant companion during dinner.

So what did I order? What else, but one of the world's great hamburgers and an Arnold Palmer, that refreshing mix of iced tea and lemonade that is, to me, synonymous with the California sun.