Cordon’s Ranch Market from “Christmas with the Kranks”

Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

Christmas with the Kranks has got to be one of the oddest movies I’ve ever come across location-wise.  The 2004 holiday flick not only used the backlots of three (count ‘em!) three different L.A. studios to portray Riverside, Illinois, the Chicago suburb where the story takes place (as I chronicled in this post), but the soundstages of yet another area studio, The Culver Studios in Culver City, were utilized for several interior sets.  And as I only recently discovered, production also played a bit fast and loose with the store where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) finally got her hands on – and then promptly lost – a Hickory Honey Ham for a last-minute Christmas party.  (The entire ham storyline is problematic, in fact, but more on that in a bit.)  I figured the location trickery would make for a great holiday post, so I ran right out to stalk Cordon’s Ranch Market in Glendale, where the majority of the grocery store scene was lensed.

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Sadly, Cordon’s Ranch Market, which was originally established in 1999, shut its doors in April 2015.  If only I had identified the location a few years sooner!

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (12 of 20)

After Cordon’s shuttering, the site underwent a heavy remodel and subsequently re-opened as Moss Supermarket a few months later.

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (5 of 20)

Moss did not last long, unfortunately, closing its doors in October 2017, a little more than two years after opening, and the space has sat vacant ever since.

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (8 of 20)

In Christmas with the Kranks, Nora heads to Cordon’s Ranch Market to buy a ham  – not just any ham, mind you, but a Mel’s Hickory Honey Cooked, Boneless, Skinless Ham with Natural Juices and Gelatin Added (um, gross!) – for her annual Christmas Eve party that she and her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen), have decided to throw at the very last minute upon learning their beloved daughter, Blair (Julie Gonzalo), is unexpectedly returning home from the Peace Corps to celebrate the holidays with them.  Hickory Honey Ham, you see, is Blair’s absolute favorite dish.

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The shop’s name and signage are both clearly visible at the top of the scene when Nora is shown parking her car.  I always assumed both had been faked for the shoot, though, due to the fact that the sign’s lettering and coloring looked very Christmas-y.  Then, on a whim a few months ago, I decided to input “Cordon’s Ranch Market” into Google and was shocked when a result was kicked back for a since-closed grocery store in Glendale!  One look at the place on Street View confirmed it was where filming had occurred.  What amazed me even more was that the signage that appeared in the movie was real, as you can see in this image of Cordon’s exterior from when it was still in operation!  Turns out it wasn’t altered to appear more holiday-ish at all!

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

Nora’s visit to the grocer does not go well.  And neither does the scene’s continuity because as soon as filming shifts to the inside of the market, we are at a different location altogether.  The store where Nora races another shopper in an attempt to nab the very last in-stock Hickory Honey Ham before ultimately crashing into a floor display at the beginning of the segment does not match these images I found of Cordon’s.  The shop that appears onscreen features a muted color scheme and some sort of a village-scape painted on its upper walls, while Cordon’s operated under the Apple Market brand and, as such, boasted bright red, green, and yellow coloring.  The movie market also has a checkered brown and white floor, which does not line up with Cordon’s blue and white tiling.

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Unfortunately, I am unsure of what grocery store was utilized for the filming of that portion of the scene.

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After Nora crashes into the display and loses her chance at grabbing the shop’s sole remaining ham, she comes across a family in the check-out line who happens to have one and she convinces them to sell it to her for an above-market price.  And that’s where things get really weird because that segment was shot at Cordon’s!  As you can see in these images of the shop, the cashier stands, general décor, and color scheme match what appeared onscreen perfectly.

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The fact that two different market interiors were utilized for the rather brief segment makes me wonder if some of the scene was re-shot.  Or if Nora was originally supposed to be shown venturing into multiple stores looking for the hard-to-get ham and, at the last minute, producers decided to combine the bits instead.  Your guess is as good as mine, though.

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Purchase safely in hand, Nora then heads out of Cordon’s, where she is promptly bumped by a passerby, causing her to drop the ham.

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

It subsequently rolls through the store’s parking lot . . .

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

. . . and into the street . . .

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (4 of 20)

. . . where it sits for a brief moment . . .

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

. . . before getting run over by a big rig . . .

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

. . . which almost hits Nora in the process.

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 2)

Though she manages to escape unscathed . . .

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Cordon's Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks (1 of 1)

. . . the ham does not.  (Per production designer Garreth Stover, 26 hams were destroyed during the making of the scene.)

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As if the market location switch-up isn’t enough, there’s more!  Though Nora returns home defeated and sans ham, a guest named Marty (Austin Pendleton) unexpectedly brings one to the Krank’s party, saving Christmas pretty much, and Nora is shown proudly serving it later in the evening to her future son-in-law, Enrique Decardenal (Rene Lavan).  But in an unexpected twist, in one of the movie’s final scenes Luther grabs an uncooked ham off of his kitchen counter and brings it over to his neighbors’ house as a sort of peace offering – which begs the question, where in the heck did that second ham come from?  Did another guest bring it?  Did Nora reconstruct the ham that was run-over by the big rig?  Did it show up as some sort of Christmas miracle?  Unfortunately, a DVD commentary was never created for the film, so, short of a sit-down with director Joe Roth, we may never know.  It seems to me a pretty huge gaffe, though, especially considering the Hickory Honey Ham storyline is so central to the movie.  I am shocked that no one caught it in post-production.

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The former Cordon’s Ranch Market from Christmas with the Kranks is located at 2931 Honolulu Avenue in Glendale.  The store is currently closed and vacant.

“Christmas with the Kranks” Studio Locations

Since I have been on such a Christmas with the Kranks kick as of late, I thought I’d finish out this year’s Yuletide posts by blogging about the movie’s studio locations.  The 2004 comedy was unusual in that it utilized the backlots of not one, not two, but three different L.A.-area studios!

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The main backlot set featured in Christmas with the Kranks was the Hemlock Street neighborhood at the now defunct Downey Studios, formerly located at 12214 Lakewood Boulevard in Downey.  The residential complex, which took 12 weeks to construct at a cost of $5 million and was comprised of 16 Midwest-style homes, was built specifically for the movie after producers came up empty-handed searching for a Chicago-area community to use in the production.  When Christmas with the Kranks wrapped, Downey Studios chose to leave the expansive set intact to be used in future productions.  It subsequently popped up in Pineapple Express, Supernatural, 24, and the Jonas Brothers’ “Paranoid” music video.  Unfortunately, Downey Studios was shuttered in 2012 and all of its sets and soundstages razed, including Hemlock Street.  Today, a retail complex known as The Promenade at Downey stands on the site.

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During the time that Downey Studios was in operation, the Hemlock Street homes were visible to passersby from nearby roads.  I stalked the place back in 2011 and seeing the façades was a thrill to say the least.  You can read a more extensive post I wrote about the former studio here.

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Because Downey Studios lacked a downtown backlot set, the production team had to venture elsewhere to film the movie’s urban scenes.  They found what they were looking for (well, in part) at Universal Studios Hollywood, located at 100 Universal City Plaza in Universal City. It was in the studio’s New York Street area that cast and crew shot the scene involving Chip’s Market, where Luther Krank (Tim Allen) attempted to buy white chocolate and pistachios for his wife, Nora (Jamie Lee Curtis).

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The Pumpkin Seed Paperie & Press stationary store, where Nora failed to place her annual Christmas card order, was also located on New York Street.  Unfortunately, the façades used in the movie were destroyed by a fire in 2008 and no longer exist.  You can see some images of them on The Studio Tour website here, here, here, and here.

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Though not a backlot location, it bears mentioning that another spot at Universal made an appearance in Christmas with the Kranks.  One of the property’s restaurants, The Studio Grill by Wolfgang Puck, is where Nora lunched with her friends Merry (Felicity Huffman) and Candi (Caroline Rhea) at the beginning of the movie.  You can check out some photos of the eatery here.

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For whatever reason, when it came time to film the scene in which Officers Salino (Cheech Marin) and Treen (Jake Busey) drive Blair Krank (Julie Gonzalo) and her new fiancé, Enrique Decardenal (Rene Lavan), home from the airport, producers chose not to utilize the Universal backlot, but instead headed over to Warner Bros. Studio, located at 3400 West Riverside Drive in Burbank.  (Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for the photo that appears below, which he took during one of the many WB tours that we’ve embarked upon together.)

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The scene was shot on Warner Bros. Studio’s famed Hennesy Street.

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The spot where the officers arrest a burglar in the scene can be found in the southeastern portion of Hennesy Street.

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If that area looks familiar to my fellow stalkers, that’s because it should.  It has been immortalized in numerous iconic productions over the years.

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I chronicled some of its onscreen appearances for both Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles, but figured it was worthy of a re-cap.

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The same area of the backlot is most famous for being the site of the upside-down kiss in 2002’s Spider-Man.

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It also served as the rear of the Hudson St. Home for Girls in the 1982 musical Annie.

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The southeastern portion of Hennesy Street masked as the block in Okinawa, Japan where Sato’s (Danny Kamekona) dojo was located in 1986’s The Karate Kid Part II.

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It was also there that Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston) introduced herself to Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Season 2 episode of Friends titled “The One After the Superbowl: Part 2.”

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Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) attempted to smoke there in the Season 3 episode of Sex and the City titled “Escape from New York.”

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And the area was also used as the exterior of Toby Cavanaugh’s (Keegan Allen) loft on Pretty Little Liars.

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I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone has a safe and joyous holiday!  My posts in the coming week will be light, but I promise to be back in 2017 with lots of new content!

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Westside Pavilion from “Christmas with the Kranks”

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Some cities know how to do Christmas right.  Sadly, Palm Springs is not one of them.  As I mentioned last year, the desert just seems to be lacking when it comes to Christmas décor.  Yes, there are lights and garland strung in certain sections of our local mall and colorful wreaths hung from a few select street lights, but overall the Coachella Valley doesn’t really have a holiday feel.  So much so that two years ago, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to make an annual December pilgrimage to Los Angeles so that we could shop in a city that truly embraces the holidays.  (You’d be hard-pressed to find a mall in L.A. that does not have a two- or three-story tree.  Now that’s how I want to do my Christmas shopping!)  Shortly before we ventured out this year, I discovered that Christmas with the Kranks had done some filming at Westside Pavilion, so we headed there first.  And it turned out to be a truly magical experience.  But more on that in a bit.

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As I talked about in Friday’s post, earlier this month I set out to track down some unknown locations from Christmas with the Kranks.  After identifying the Irish pub from the 2004 comedy, I turned my focus on the mall where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen), visited “Tans Forever” tanning booth.

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While watching the scene, I noticed, via the escalators visible behind Nora and Luther, that the Christmas with the Kranks shopping center had three levels.  So I did a Google search for “three-story mall” and “Los Angeles” and was led to this LA Tourist article which mentioned the Westside Pavilion and its three floors of storefronts.  One look at images of the Pavilion told me that it was definitely the right place!  From there, I just had to figure out the exact spot where filming had occurred.

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It was obvious in the scene that the Tans Forever storefront had been created on Westside Pavilion’s second floor.  And thankfully the names of a few neighboring businesses were visible in the background, including Shoe Care, Payless ShoeSource, and Regis Hairstylists.

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A quick look at Westside Pavilion’s online map showed me that while Regis had since moved, Payless and Shoe Care were still located in the same area – on the mall’s second level near Macy’s.  So the Grim Cheaper and I headed right on over to that spot upon arriving at the shopping center.

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To our surprise, as soon as we stepped off the escalator we noticed that a film shoot was taking place!  As we walked closer, I just about fainted upon realizing the shoot was for The Goldbergs, a show that the GC and I just recently started watching and are officially obsessed with.  The cast and crew honestly could not have been nicer and I will be doing a whole post on our experience as soon as the episode that was being filmed airs.

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After watching The Goldbergs shoot for a bit, the GC and I attempted to figure out the exact spots where Christmas with the Kranks filming had taken place.  We pinpointed the escalator used in the movie easily enough.  In the scene, Nora and Luther use the down escalator situated near PacSun to go from the mall’s third level to the second.

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Even though I knew the general vicinity, pinpointing the spot where the Tans Forever storefront had been set up proved more difficult.  It was not until I got home and enlisted the help of my friend/guest poster extraordinaire Michael (you can read his many amazing posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) that I was able to figure it out.  As we discovered, the Tans Forever salon was created in what is now Kid’s Club (that’s the teal storefront in the photograph pictured below).

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Thanks to some old Westside Pavilion maps that he found online, Michael learned that at the time of the filming the Kid’s Club space was vacant and had most recently housed a Ritz Camera.  Sadly, but not surprisingly, the storefront does not currently look anything like it did in Christmas with the Kranks.  Sadder still, while stalking the mall, I came to believe that a different shop had been used in the shoot, so I barely took any photos of Kid’s Club.

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We did venture inside, though, while looking for some gifts for the kids on our list and, while the real life interior of the space was also used in Christmas with the Kranks, because it was a shop created especially for the movie, it currently bears no resemblance to its onscreen appearance.

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Westside Pavilion has been featured in a few other holiday-themed productions, as well!  Though not a Christmas movie, in 1987’s No Man’s Land, Ted Varrick (Charlie Sheen) and Benjy Taylor (D.B. Sweeney) shop at – and steal a Porsche from – the mall during Christmastime.

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The Season 5 holiday-themed episode of Modern Family titled “The Old Man and the Tree,” which aired in 2013, was also shot at Westside Pavilion.  It is there that Mitchell Pritchett (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) shops for a Puppy Pound toy for his daughter, Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons), and that Alex Dunphy (Ariel Winter) and Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland) work as Mrs. Claus and an elf, respectively, for an absentee Santa Claus.

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The mall has also appeared in a couple of non-Christmas-themed productions.  Tom Petty rode the escalators there in his 1989 “Free Fallin’” music video, which you can watch here.

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And the exterior of the Pavilion was used in an establishing shot in the 1995 comedy Clueless.  (All of the movie’s interior mall scenes were lensed at Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, which I blogged about here.)

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Michael for all of his help in pinpointing the Tans Forever storefront!  Smile

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Westside Pavilion from Christmas with the Kranks is located at 10800 West Pico Boulevard in Rancho Park.  Filming took place on the second level in and around what is now Kid’s Club.  You can visit the mall’s official website here.

Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery from “Christmas with the Kranks”

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I don’t know what it is about Christmas movies, but I cannot watch them without crying.  Even the not-so-great ones make me bawl.  Case in point – the 2004 comedy Christmas with the Kranks.  While admittedly not one of the best Yuletide films, the Grim Cheaper and I watch it each year and I cry every.single.time.  After our recent annual watch, I decided to attempt to track down some of the flick’s unknown locales.  The spot at the top of my list was the Irish pub where Nora Krank (Jamie Lee Curtis) ate with her husband, Luther Krank (Tim Allen).  Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a place I have dined at many times!

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In Christmas with the Kranks, upon facing the prospect of spending the holidays without their daughter who has just joined the Peace Corps, Luther convinces Nora to skip Christmas.  Their friends and neighbors don’t take the decision lightly.  While dining at an Irish pub towards the beginning of the movie, Nora complains to Luther that she is the one having to deal with the fallout.  As she explains, “It’s us women who handle Christmas, not men.  I am the one taking the brunt for your harebrained scheme!  I am the one on the front lines!”

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Besides the fact that the pub looked incredibly cozy in the scene, there’s pretty much nothing I love more than dining at movie restaurants, so it was a no-brainer that I wanted to track this spot down.  Unfortunately, I had a little trouble doing so due to the fact that not much of the eatery was shown onscreen and no notable clues were visible in the background.

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The more I re-watched the scene, though, the more I had a sense that the restaurant was familiar to me – that I had been there before.  Then, all of a sudden, the green-hued bar-top visible behind Nora jumped out at me and I immediately knew where filming had taken place – the Hamburger Hamlet located at 214 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena.

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I have dined at the Hamlet countless times over the years.  In fact, ironically enough, when I lived in Pasadena the eatery was a regular pit stop during the holidays.  Every December, my mom and I would inevitably pop in for a bite to eat while out Christmas shopping in the area.  Even more ironic, we would invariably sit in the bar, the exact area where Christmas with the Kranks was filmed!

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Why I had such a tough time identifying the place is beyond me, but I am guessing it is because Hamburger Hamlet is not actually an Irish pub as was depicted in the movie and therefore is not decorated as such, it is not nearly as dark as it was portrayed to be onscreen, and only a tight shot of it was ever shown.  I really should have recognized the restaurant’s unique back room, though, which is visible behind Luther in the screen capture below.

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Hamburger Hamlet’s rear room, which is strewn with spacious red leather arm chairs, is situated around a large central brick fire pit, made complete with a metal hood affixed to the ceiling.  As I said, it’s unique.  Being that the chains that anchor the hood to the ceiling were visible in the background of Christmas with the Kranks, this one really should have been an easy find.

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Now you’re probably saying, “Wait a minute, the title of this post is ‘Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery’ not ‘Hamburger Hamlet!’”  Sadly, the Pasadena Hamlet, which was originally established in 1967, shut its doors after almost fifty years in business on January 3rd, 2014.  A Du-par’s outpost was opened at the site the following morning.

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I had yet to visit the location since Du-par’s took over and assumed that all of the décor had been changed.  I was thrilled to see, via the hundreds of photographs on Yelp, that that was not the case!  The eatery still looks exactly as it did during its Hamburger Hamlet days, i.e. wood paneling and red leather galore!

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The GC and I headed over there to grab a bite a few days later and I am happy to report that the restaurant looks just as great in person as it did in the Yelp images.  And the food is darn good, too, though that did not come as a surprise being that I’ve always been a big fan of Du-par’s fare.  Any eatery that serves a hot turkey meal with all the fixings on a daily basis is A-ok in my book!

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As I mentioned earlier, in Christmas with the Kranks, Nora and Luther sat in the restaurant’s bar area, pretty much in the exact spot where the pub table is situated in the images below.

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I would like to wish a VERY happy birthday to my dad (and my uncle – his twin) – today!  Thank you for all the light and laughter you bring us on a daily basis (as evidenced by the photo below – I remember exactly what you said to me in that moment and still crack up whenever I think about it!), despite all your suffering!  I love you!

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For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Du-par’s Restaurant and Bakery, aka the former Hamburger Hamlet, aka the Irish pub from Christmas with the Kranks, is located at 214 South Lake Avenue in Pasadena.