An image of the Black Dahlia crime scene sets the mood for dinner. How about some pinot extra noir? 

It takes a special sort of person to think it’s a swell idea to have a pricey meal ($65 per) while looking at photos of the Black Dahlia crime scene. Although I can’t imagine many things more distasteful, I suppose that in a city the size of Los Angeles, there are enough ghoulish people with too much money who will make this a profitable enterprise. The event was part of something called “Los Angeles Eats Itself” and no, we won’t go there.

The premise of this meal, by chef Jonathan Moulton of City Tavern, according Paul Teetor in L.A. Weekly, is that because Elizabeth Short had bad teeth, the meal would consist of dishes that she wouldn’t have trouble eating. Ignoring the fact that she carried a supply of candles with her and plugged the cavities in her teeth with melted wax. Had those who planned the meal been aware of this fact, possibly the table decorations would have included matchbooks and large, plain white candles so that patrons could apply wax to their teeth for the true Black Dahlia experience.

Teetor (whom you may recall from a gushing, unskeptical article about Steve Hodel in the now-defunct Times magazine) falls into the old lie that Elizabeth Short had “deformed genitalia.” Sorry, no. This popular story was concocted by the late Will Fowler, for whom lying was as natural as breathing.

Specifically, Moulton wanted to re-create what Elizabeth Short might have eaten on the last day of her life, quite overlooking the autopsy report on the contents of her stomach, which included feces. There apparently was no interest in going overboard with this accuracy nonsense.

I would suggest that for the next gathering of the grim eaters, the last meal of Bugsy Siegel, who dined at Jack’s on the Beach in Santa Monica shortly before being shot in the head with an M-1 carbine while he was reading the newspaper. And my, wouldn’t all those cartridges and bloody copies of the Los Angeles Times make festive table decorations?  And maybe bits of eyelash stuck to the wall.

Bone appetit, folks.