Orson Welles was one of the most famous of Hollywood gastronomes, as legendary for the breadth of his waistcoat as for that of his talent. As long ago as 1941, in fact, columnist Sidney Skolsky wrote that Welles was the only actor ever to have had a dish named after him at Chasen’s, the ultimate Hollywood restaurant. Skolsky didn’t identify the dish, but noted that it involved “a three- or four-pound piece of roast beef.” Welles later told an interviewer that the dish referred to must have been “a roast beef hash that Dave Chasen had always made in the old days of vaudeville. I didn’t invent it. It was something he used to make late at night at Chasen’s, you know, when we’d stay up—and I liked it and finally he named it for me.” When I asked the restaurant’s long-time manager, Ronald Clint, about the dish not long ago, he told me that he doubted that the dish had ever borne Welles’ name. “We’ve never named dishes after celebrities on our menu,” he said. Nonetheless, he admitted, this simple, savory hash might well have been a Welles favorite.