The welcoming caress of the round red leather booths, martinis so potent they come with sidecars, a menu that seems largely unchanged since 1946 — there's very little that's modern about Burbank's Smoke House. Thankfully, that includes the cheese bread. The bright orange hue makes it look like it's been coated with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, but the intense flavor is all salt, garlic and cheese powder. Is there an entire stick of butter in each half-loaf? It certainly seems so. This is a recipe concocted long before “carb” was an epithet. Hopefully, no nutritional fad will ever change that. 4420 W. Lakeside Drive, Burbank. (818) 845-3731, smokehouse1946.com.

—Elina Shatkin

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