Mooshadows, for years one of the best restaurants in Malibu, was built in 1966 on the same piling foundation that originally supported the Big Rock Cafe built in 1949. The Big Rock Cafe was owned by Art Jones an early Malibu entrepreneur with a rather a colorful history. For stories about him one should call Malibu realtor Jack Corrodi who knew him well. In the 1950s there was a Shell gas station about 200 feet west from the Big Rock Cafe. In those days, the gas pumps had a considerable amount of character. They were topped with lamps, now probably collector items, consisting of a white glass cover within which was a light bulb. The lamps were shaped like the familiar Shell logo, a kind of scallop, and across them was the word SHELL in red. Remember those? A gallon of gas then cost about thirty cents. The site of the gas station by the Big Rock Cafe is now part of the Moonshadows parking lot. The only evidence of it in 1984 was its storage tank which then, a rusting relic, lay marooned on the rocks below the parking lot deck. But I digress.

The cuisine of Moonshadows was preceded by the coffee-shop fare of the Big Rock Cafe which wasn't bad. However, this does not exhaust the local gustatory history. Before even the first road along the shoreline, the high, steep sea cliff opposite what was later the site of the Big Rock Cafe, was then, as now, incised by a the scar of a pre-historic landslide with a mass of debris at its base. Apparently, the lower part of the slide mass formed a terrace that became a convenient campsite for natives who harvested mussels from the reef rocks exposed then, as now, jut offshore. Later, the camp site was almost entirely graded away in highway construction operations. Almost.

Today, if from the Moonshadows' entrance you walk 385 feet east, you will find yourself between 20312 and 20314 PCH. If then you don't mind taking your life in your hands, run across the highway. There you will be confronted with a steep slope about 20 feet high in which is exposed debris from that pre-historic landslide. If further, and with considerable effort, you climb up the slope (an extension ladder would be helpful), you should find a pile of charcoal and shell fragments. Anthropologists refer to such sites as a "kitchen midden," i.e., a place used for the disposal of campsite refuse. Whether the natives who used this campsite were forebears of Malibu's Chumash, I do not know. But I do know that from midden charcoal samples I collected in 1984, the late Professor C.R. Berger of UCLA obtained radio-carbon ages of 1875 ±50 years, and 1925 ±50 years before the present - all of which, even if you are not a history buff, suggests some interesting dish descriptions for Moonshadows menus.

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