famous restaurants – Page 9

April 7, 2015April 6, 2015

Hamburger Hamlet from “Parks and Recreation”

Halfway through writing this post, I realized I probably should have saved it until February. At that point, though, it was too late to start over, so I figured c’est la vie. Here goes. A few years ago, when I first saw the “Galentine’s Day” episode of Parks and Recreation, I recognized the restaurant featured in it as the Hamburger Hamlet in Pasadena. I used to dine at the eatery fairly regularly when I lived in the area and immediately recalled its signature red leather seating, brick walling and dark wood accents while watching P&R. It was not until a couple of a months ago that I decided to do any research on the locale, though, and when I got to comparing images of it to screen captures from the episode, I realized that, while similar, quite a bit did not match up. I quickly surmised that “Galentine’s Day” had most likely been lensed at another of the Hamburger Hamlet chain’s many outposts and, sure enough, eventually discovered that filming had taken place at the Sherman Oaks location.

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The Hamburger Hamlet chain was established by actor Harry Lewis and his wife, Marilyn, in 1950. The first outpost stood on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hilldale Avenue in West Hollywood and served comfort food and gourmet hamburgers. It was insanely popular from the get-go.

It was not long before HH outposts were cropping up all over Los Angeles, as well as in other states. In its heyday, 23 sister restaurants dotted the country. The L.A. locations were known as being celebrity hot spots, attracting such legendaries as Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Diahann Carroll, Bette Davis, Danny Thomas, Mel Brooks, Warren Beatty, Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Curtis, Florence Henderson, Elton John, Betty White, Nancy Sinatra, and Dean Martin.

Harry and Marilyn sold the chain, as well as their Beverly Hills eatery Kate Mantilini, for a whopping $30 million in 1987. They later ended up buying Kate Mantilini back and subsequently opened up a sister location in Woodland Hills. Both were also insanely popular with celebrities (I once dined next to Reese Witherspoon at the Beverly Hills outpost) and non-celebrities alike, but have since, sadly, closed.

Recent years have not been kind to the Hamlet. Though the eateries were still bustling with business most days, news of closures popped up regularly. When the Pasadena outpost was shuttered in January 2014, the only HH left in the L.A. area was in Sherman Oaks. It, too, wound up closing in June of last year, but was, thankfully, acquired by Kevin Michaels and Brett Doherty, the restaurateurs behind Killer Shrimp in Marina del Rey – another popular filming location that I I blogged about here. The duo reopened the site, keeping many of the Hamlet’s menu staples intact, in September.

I have been a huge fan of the Hamlet ever since I first moved to Southern California and am happy to report that the re-opened Sherman Oaks location did not disappoint. As always, the food was great and the service friendly. Supposedly, the space will be undergoing a remodel at some point this year, though, so if you want to see it in its current state, I wouldn’t wait.

In the Season 2 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Galentine’s Day,” which aired in 2010, Hamburger Hamlet was where Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) took her girlfriends out for their annual Galentine’s Day breakfast. For those who did not watch P&R and are confused as to what exactly Galentine’s Day is, I’ll let Leslie explain – “Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home and we just come and kick it breakfast-style. Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lilith Fair, minus the angst . . . plus frittatas.”

Leslie and the girls returned to the Hamlet in 2012 to film another Galentine’s Day breakfast scene for Season 4’s “Operation Ann.”

Oddly though, a different place – Villa restaurant from Must Love Dogs, which I blogged about here – was used for the establishing shot of the restaurant in the episode.

Fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, also informed me that the Sherman Oaks Hamburger Hamlet was used in the Season 8 episode of The Office titled “The List” as the spot where Robert California (James Spader) took a select few Dunder Mifflin employees for lunch.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hamburger Hamlet, aka the Galentine’s Day restaurant from Parks and Recreation, is located at 4419 Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

December 25, 2014December 17, 2014

New “Los Angeles” Mag Post – About Cindy’s Restaurant from “Surviving Christmas”

I would like to wish all of my fellow stalkers a very merry Christmas today! You can check out my new Los Angeles magazine post here – about Cindy’s Eagle Rock Restaurant from Surviving Christmas. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

December 16, 2014December 15, 2014

The Grill on the Alley from “The Holiday”

This past weekend, while wandering through my local Target with the Grim Cheaper, I happened to spot a DVD of fave movie The Holiday on sale for $3.99! When I saw that the special features included a commentary with director Nancy Meyers and a making-of featurette, I just about flipped my lid and immediately snapped the DVD up. (Though I have seen The Holiday more times than I can count, because I own it on iTunes, I had never seen any of the special features.) It was perfect timing, too, since I am now (finally) in the midst of writing my Christmas-themed posts. I had also just stalked The Grill on the Alley, which was featured in the flick, this past November while my friends Lavonna, Kim, Melissa and Maria were in town (that’s Melissa and Maria above), so I was most excited to listen to the commentary from that portion of the film.

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The Grill on the Alley was originally founded in January 1984 by a man named Bob Spivak. The food industry ran in Bob’s veins – his grandfather owned a Los Angeles ice cream/chocolate shop in the early 1900s and his father was the founder of the Redwood House, now known as the Redwood Bar & Grill, which was featured in Bridesmaids and which I blogged about here. In 1982, at the age of 39 and after a long tenure working in a grocery store and a short tenure owning a soup/salad restaurant, Bob found himself at a transition point in life. Recently divorced, without a job and living on his father’s couch, he decided he wanted to open an upscale steakhouse in Beverly Hills, one that offered fabulous customer service and no-nonsense food. He found financial backers fairly quickly and then secured a space to lease. The only problem with the 4,600-square-foot spot was that its main frontage was on an extremely traffic-y block of Wilshire Boulevard, on a stretch of street that did not allow parking until after 7 p.m. each day. (The Wilshire side of the building is pictured below.)

The location did have a rear entrance, though, reached via a side alley off of Dayton Way, which gave Bob an idea. In a February 2014 The Hollywood Reporter article, he explains, “I went to the building department and asked to place the entrance on the alley. They wouldn’t let me due to an ordinance against businesses opening onto an alley that they had in place. So I pulled maps and realized I had less than an inch of Dayton frontage and went to a hardware store, bought a mailbox and painted 9560 Dayton on it. Just made that address up. Then I went to the post office, mailed myself a letter, got it delivered and showed the canceled stamp to the building department. They approved it!”

That “less than an inch of Dayton frontage” is denoted with red arrows below. What a great story!

Thanks to its proximity to the headquarters of the William Morris Talent Agency, The Grill soon became the place “to lunch” in Beverly Hills. Just a few of the power players and their clients who have been spotted dining there over the years include Michael Ovitz, Sumner Redstone, Rupert Murdoch, Ron Meyer (father of Jennifer Meyer), Tom Brokaw, Vin Scully, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Fred Astaire, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Muhammad Ali, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Carson, Katie Holmes, Sean Penn, Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Joel McHale, and Michael Douglas.

The Grill remains insanely popular to this day, over thirty years after its founding. In fact, the eatery has spawned six additional Grill on the Alley locations, as well as the casual dining chain The Daily Grill, of which there are currently 21 outposts.

While we were stalking the place, we had the pleasure of meeting The Grill’s longtime maître d’, Pamela Gonyea . . .

. . . as well as the restaurant’s wine education coordinator, Carmen Rupe, both of whom could NOT have been nicer. Bob maintains that The Grill’s customer service philosophy is, “The answer is yes – now what was the question.” And we were certainly given that treatment despite the fact that we were not even dining on the premises! Carmen and Pamela spent quite a bit of time answering all of our questions about the various filmings that have taken place there over the years and they also let us take all of the photographs of the place that we wanted. Carmen even led us over to the center of the dining room to show us exactly where The Holiday had been filmed!

In The Holiday, The Grill on the Alley is where Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) takes Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) for dinner shortly after meeting him. Before inviting him to dine with her, Iris asks Arthur if he is busy that evening, to which he gives his famous line, “Busy? Honey, I haven’t been busy since 1978.”

According to Nancy Meyers’ DVD commentary, The Grill on the Alley was chosen for the scene because it is a place that Arthur, a former Hollywood screenwriter, and his colleagues would have frequented in their day. Nancy had the two seated at a regular table in the center of the Grill’s dining room to show they are just regular people, not the “Hollywood elite.” Apparently the booths that line the perimeter of the restaurant are considered prime real estate in real life and where the show biz power players are usually seated.

I, of course, just had to pose for a picture in the same spot where the movie was filmed.

Carmen and Pamela also informed us that The Grill had been featured in the Season 5 episode of Entourage titled “Fantasy Island.”

In the episode, The Grill on the Alley was the spot where Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) discussed the upcoming movie Danger Beach with producer Carl Ertz (Kim Coates). Notice that Vincent and Carl were seated in a perimeter booth in the scene.

Pamela was even visible in the episode!

Pamela and Carmen also let us know that the Season 5 episode of The Hills titled “Keep Your Enemies Closer” had been shot at the restaurant. In the episode, The Grill was where Stephanie Pratt went on a date with a DJ named Robert.

On a side-note – I would like to wish a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY today to my dad, who, despite being chronically ill, always finds a way to regularly do special, extraordinary things for my mom, the GC and me. I love you so much! (That’s me and my dad pictured below during one of my very first trips to Disneyland.)

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Grill on the Alley, from The Holiday, is located at 9560 Dayton Way in Beverly Hills. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here.

December 11, 2014December 11, 2014

Today’s L.A. Mag Post – About Ira’s Roadside Diner from “Million Dollar Baby”

Don’t forget to read today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about Ida’s Roadside Diner from Million Dollar Baby. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

December 9, 2014December 8, 2014

Regular Jon’s Pizza from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

Fellow stalker Chas, of the It’sFilmedThere website, recently texted me to let me know he had tracked down a location that I had been curious about for what seemed like forever – the pizza parlor from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Thanks to John Hughes’ DVD commentary of the flick, I knew that the restaurant was once in Brentwood and was no longer in operation, but I still desperately wanted to find its former location. So I was thrilled to receive Chas’ text and ran right out to stalk the site last week while I was in L.A.

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As it turns out, the pizzeria that made an appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was Regular Jon’s, formerly located at 11645 San Vicente Boulevard. The eatery was originally founded by Jon Persoff in 1971 and was a Brentwood landmark for the twenty years that it was in operation. Sadly, when Persoff’s lease expired in 1991, the landlord raised his rent considerably causing Jon to close up shop, much to the chagrin of the restaurant’s many regulars. After Jon’s was shuttered, the space was completely gutted and turned into a Louise’s Trattoria. When Louise’s closed, Yuzu Sushi Roll House & Sake Bar moved in. Today, the site houses an organic eatery known as the Coral Tree Café. Unfortunately, it looks completely different in its current state than it did when Regular Jon’s was still in operation.

The good news is that Regular Jon’s has a sister location, which Chas also informed me of. When Persoff passed away on September 25th, 2010, a former regular and one-time employee named Steven Goldberg decided to make a pizza in the former Regular Jon’s-style in his honor. He spent weeks trying to replicate the thin crust recipe that generations of Brentwoodians had fallen in love with over four decades prior. He finally nailed it and posted a comment about his endeavor on his Facebook page. Soon friends were clamoring for him to make them a Regular Jon’s pizza and an idea took hold – Steve would establish his own replica pizzeria. He opened the new eatery, which he dubbed “Steve’s Un-Original Pizza,” in November 2013 inside of the MB2 Raceway at 1475 Lawrence Drive in Thousand Oaks. I ventured out to stalk the place last week and had the pleasure of meeting Steve. He could NOT have been nicer. In fact, when I showed up to the parlor, it was not yet open for the day. Figuring my chances were slim to none, but being that I had just driven an hour and a half, I decided to call the number on the website to ask if there was anyway I could come inside to snap some pics. And what do you know, he invited me right in!

Steve designed his pizzeria to be reminiscent of Regular Jon’s, with dark wood paneling and an old school brown and yellow menu board.

He also has numerous photographs of his yearly childhood birthday parties, which all took place at Regular Jon’s, as well as a panoramic screen capture from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on display. I absolutely loved seeing it all! You can check out some more of Steve’s old photographs on his Facebook page here.

Steve answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and filled me in on Regular Jon’s history. While I was under the assumption that the Jon’s building had been torn down after the site closed in 1991, Steve informed me that was not the case. He said that the Jon’s property originally consisted of a thin, one-story, rectangular building with a large L-shaped parking lot. That original rendering is denoted with a pink arrow in the Historic Aerials image below.

In the early ‘80s, Jon expanded the eatery by adding a second, larger attached rectangular building that was constructed in the side portion of the parking lot. The two-part structure remains standing today, but due to the many changes in ownership and subsequent remodels, it, unfortunately, looks nothing like it did when Jon’s was in operation.

In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Regular Jon’s is where principal Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) goes in the hopes of catching Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) cutting school. While an exterior of the pizzeria is not shown in the movie, the spot where Rooney parks his car before heading inside Jon’s is actually located just outside of Chicago, where FBDO is set. Rooney parks where Chestnut Street intersects with Chestnut Court in Winnetka.

Quite a bit of Regular Jon’s is shown in the movie, including the order counter . . .

. . . and the eating area and small arcade –

– where Rooney has an unfortunate encounter with a straw full of soda. “Le jeux son faits!”

Regular Jon’s also appeared in a couple of other productions. In 1978, it was the spot where Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval) searched for clues while looking for Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) in the Season 2 episode of Dallas titled “Kidnapped.”

That same year, the pizzeria was featured in the pilot episode of the television series The Paper Chase as the restaurant where Harvard Law School student James T. Hart (James Stephens) worked. For subsequent episodes of the series, a different location was used as James’ workplace.

You can watch all of The Paper Chase scenes shot at Regular Jon’s by clicking below.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Regular Jon’s, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was formerly located at 11645 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood. The space now houses the Coral Tree Café. Steve’s Un-Original Pizza can be found at 1475 Lawrence Drive, inside of the MB2 Raceway, in Thousand Oaks. You can visit Steve’s official website here.

December 8, 2014December 7, 2014

Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant from “Black Widow”

Sorry to have been a bit M.I.A. lately – my personal life has been rather hectic. This week will be a little light on columns, too, as both of my parents have doctor appointments in L.A. that I have to take them, too. So please bear with me. Smile And now, on with the the post! Another day, another Iggy Azalea location. Because my good friends Kim and Lavonna are such Iggy fans, before their recent visit, I did some research on locales from the Australian rapper’s “Black Widow” music video. The place that I was most excited about tracking down was the restaurant that appeared in both the video’s opening and closing scenes. As it turns out, the eatery is none other than Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant, an L.A. staple that was originally founded in 1947. So the girls and I headed right on out to Westlake to stalk it while they were in town last month.

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Langer’s was originally founded by New Jersey native Al Langer. Al started in the restaurant business early in life, getting a job as a busboy in a delicatessen at the age of 11. During those years he learned how to hand-slice pastrami, a rare skill that served him well as he ventured out on his own. Al’s family moved to Los Angeles in 1936 and he continued to work in the restaurant business. That same year, he opened a deli in Palm Springs. The deli only lasted one short season and Al subsequently returned to L.A. He worked again in a café, before serving in World War II. When the war ended, Al purchased a small eatery in Los Angeles, which he owned for a year. He then bought a 12-seat restaurant on the corner of 7th and Alvarado Streets known as The Famous Deli and renamed it Langer’s. The place was popular from the get-go and Al wound up expanding it twice. Today, Al’s son, Norm, still serves his father’s famous pastrami sandwiches from that very same location, which can now seat 135 patrons.

Sadly, we showed up to stalk Langer’s in the early evening and it was no longer open (it closes at 4 p.m. each afternoon), so we were only able to snap photographs of the interior through the windows. (A BIG thank you to Lavonna for taking all of the pictures that appear in this post!)

In “Black Widow,” Langer’s masks as “Big Wanda’s Killer Burgers,” where Iggy Azalea works and where Michael Madsen and Rita Ora stop by for a bacon sandwich with cheese – “like a lotta cheese, OK, like melted cheese, like dripping off of it.”

Only the interior of Langer’s was featured in the video and, as you can see, it looks exactly the same in person as it does onscreen.

You can watch the “Black Widow” video by clicking below.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Langer’s Delicatessen-Restaurant, from Iggy Azalea’s “Black Widow” music video, is located at 704 South Alvarado Street in Westlake. Langer’s is open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

September 10, 2014October 22, 2018

The Victorian from “Mr. Mom”

Some movie scenes just seem to stay with you, seared into your memory for years, despite the fact that you can remember little else about the storyline. That’s how it was for me and Mr. Mom. I had not seen the comedy since 1983 when it first premiered in theatres and recalled few details from it, but the scene in which Jack (Michael Keaton) dried his baby’s bottom in a public restroom using a hand blower had stuck with me. Recently, on a whim, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to re-watch the flick. I was pleasantly surprised to discover how relevant Mr. Mom still is – and even more pleasantly surprised to recognize a location while watching!

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In a brief scene towards the end of Mr. Mom, Jack goes out to dinner with some of the housewives from his neighborhood.

Despite some changes to the exterior, I immediately recognized the spot where the group dined as The Victorian (aka Basement Tavern) located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. It is a place that the Grim Cheaper and I frequent on a regular basis whenever staying on L.A.’s west side. We discovered the eatery about a year ago during an evening stroll on Main Street and fell in love with its gorgeous patio – which I posted a picture of on Instagram – on sight. We promptly decided to grab dinner there and were thrilled by the restaurant’s top-notch menu and fabulous happy hour. It has been one of our dining staples ever since.

The two-story, Victorian-style property was originally constructed as a private residence for an optometrist named Dr. George Kyte in 1892. At the time, it was located at 1003 Ocean Avenue. In 1973, the 15,000-square-foot home was moved about a mile and a half south to its current location as part of Santa Monica’s California Heritage Museum project. A neighboring residence, the First Roy Jones house, was moved to an adjacent lot at the same time. The Jones House was slated to become a historical museum and the Kyte House an upscale restaurant. There were some hold-ups in the planning and development process, though, and it was not until 1977 that The Chronicle was opened inside of the Kyte House. It was founded by restaurateur Lud Renick as a sister eatery to his Pasadena outpost of the same name, which was located at 897 Granite Drive. (The Pasadena Chronicle originally opened in 1971 and was shuttered in 1996. In more recent years, the Granite Drive site housed Jennifer Lopez’s former Cuban bistro, Madres, which I blogged about here and here).

While doing research for this post, I was shocked to discover that The Chronicle was where John Thomas Sweeney worked after serving a scant three-year-eight-month jail sentence for the killing of his former girlfriend, 22-year-old Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne. I have long loved the writings of author Dominick Dunne and have read quite a bit about the 1982 murder of his daughter. When Sweeney was released from prison in 1986 after serving what Dominick called “a tap on the wrist” of a prison sentence, he landed a job as head chef at The Chronicle. The Dunne family was furious upon hearing the news and famously began standing outside the eatery each night, handing out flyers to patrons which read, “The food you will eat tonight was cooked by the hands that killed Dominique Dunne.” Sweeney soon quit, changed his name and moved to the Pacific Northwest. I had known about the flyers and the Dunne’s ongoing fight for justice for their daughter, but never knew the location of the restaurant where they staged their nightly protests.

The Chronicle, which you can see a photograph of here, shut its doors sometime around 1987. After the closure, the Kyte House was acquired by the Gerson family, who also own fave restaurant Malibu Café at Calimigos Ranch (which I blogged about last month). The Gersons operated the property solely as a special events and wedding venue for many years, but in 2010 they opened Basement Tavern, a 2,000-square-foot bar, in the basement of the home. On evenings when weddings are not taking place in the actual house, the Basement Tavern also serves dinner and drinks on the residence’s patio and bottom floor. The Victorian is a truly charming place with excellent food and I cannot more highly recommend dining there.

Fellow stalker Chris informed me that The Victorian also popped up as the supposed San Francisco-area Le Grill restaurant, where Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos) took the Tanner family to dinner to celebrate his wife Becky’s (Lori Loughlin) promotion, in the Season 8 episode of Full House titled “The Producer.”

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former The Chronicle restaurant from Mr. Mom, now The Victorian, is located at 2640 Main Street in Santa Monica. You can visit the property’s official website here and Basement Tavern’s official website here.

August 26, 2014March 1, 2015

Villa Restaurant from “Must Love Dogs”

Some filming location finds turn out to be a disappointment in person while others wind up to be better than I ever could have imagined. Today’s stalk – of Villa restaurant from the 2005 romantic comedy Must Love Dogs – was a little bit of both.

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For several months, I had been on a fruitless search for the outdoor eatery that appeared in the beginning of Must Love Dogs, in the scene in which Sarah Nolan (Diane Lane) showed up for a date with someone she met online only to discover that her date was actually her father, Bill (Christopher Plummer). The bistro was absolutely adorable and reminded me quite a bit of Aroma Café in Studio City, one of my favorite spots in all of L.A. Try as I might, though, I just could not seem to locate it. I finally enlisted the help of fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, and he found the place in record time. A Google search of the terms “restaurant, patio, fountain, San Fernando Valley,” led him to the website for Villa in Woodland Hills. Images posted there proved it was the right spot. Sadly though, the images also showed that the eatery had been remodeled in recent years and, in the process, seemed to have lost much of its charm. I was heartbroken to learn of the renovation, but decided to stalk the place nonetheless. As it turns out, despite the facelift, Villa is still quite spectacular.

The space that currently houses Villa was originally the site of Eckberg’s Steakhouse, which was founded in the 1960s. At the time, the property was a private home owned by Russ and Eleanor Eckberg. Russ worked in the meat industry and, upon retiring, decided to convert the living room of his house into a small ten-table restaurant with an adjacent open kitchen. And yes, Russ and Eleanor still lived on the premises. When they fully retired in the late 1970s, the space was taken over by restaurateur John Makhani. He remodeled and expanded the residence (keeping much of the original framing intact) and re-opened it in 1981.

The restaurant has gone through several incarnations under Makhani’s tutelage. At one point, it was a French eatery named Lautrec and then later it became an Italian spot named Villa Piacere. It was during its time as Piacere that Must Love Dogs was filmed on the premises. Makhani decided to revamp the space again in 2012 and, with the help of designer Thomas Schoos, transformed both the interior and the exterior.

When it was re-opened, the “Piacere” was dropped from the name and the restaurant became known simply as “Villa.”

The filming of Must Love Dogs took place on Villa Piacere’s back patio.

As you can see below, that area, while still somewhat recognizable, looks significantly different today.

Gone are the flowered tablecloths, country-style furniture and tiered water fountain.

While I was originally disappointed to learn of the changes, I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped onto Villa’s patio. In the photographs Owen had found online, the space looked sleek and cold, but in person, it turned out to be quaint, adorable and absolutely charming. I fell in love with it on site! So did Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who had joined me on the stalk, and we both promptly made plans to return there for dinner with our significant others in the near future.

The super-nice server whom we spoke with while we were there informed us that Villa had appeared onscreen numerous times over the years. The interior of the eatery popped up in the 2013 biopic Jobs as the spot where Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) made the decision not to give Daniel Kottke (Lukas Haas) any Apple stock options.

A different exterior was used for the establishing shot of the restaurant in the scene.

In the Season 4 episode of Parks and Recreation titled “Operation Ann,” the exterior of Villa masked as the Bluebell Cafe. Interiors were filmed at the Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks, though. (Interiors from Season 2’s “Galentine’s Day” were also filmed at the Hamburger Hamlet.)

In the Season 1 episode of LeAnn & Eddie (and let’s hope that there only winds up to be one season of that train wreck of a show) titled “Babes and a Baby,” LeAnn Rimes dined at Villa with some of her childhood friends.

Villa’s tree-canopied parking lot appeared in Buick’s recent “Hmm” commercial.

The parking lot is absolutely gorgeous in person! I can only imagine what it looks like at night all lit up.

You can watch the Buick “Hmm” commercial by clicking below.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Villa restaurant, from Must Love Dogs, is located at 22160 Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. You can visit the eatery’s official website here.

August 7, 2014August 28, 2014

New “L.A.” Mag Post – About Baco Mercat from “The Other Woman”

Don’t forget to read my newest Los Angeles magazine post – about Baco Mercat from The Other Woman. My columns typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.

July 9, 2014July 8, 2014

Café Figaro from “Jerry Maguire”

Today’s post is a long time in the making. Off and on for years now I have been trying to track down the restaurant where Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) got fired in the 1996 romcom of the same name. I decided to actively revisit the search a couple of weeks ago and, this time, got Mike, from MovieShotsLA, involved. He wound up finding the place shortly thereafter. As it turns out, Jerry was let go from Sports Management International while at Café Figaro at 9010 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Sadly, the eatery was shuttered in 1997, but Mike and I headed right on out to stalk its former location nonetheless.

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Mike pinpointed the locale thanks to the unique trees visible outside of the restaurant during the firing scene. Those trees can only be found on a few streets in the L.A. area, one of which is Melrose Avenue. So he began his search at the start of Melrose (just east of where it intersects with North Doheny Drive) and, sure enough, found the right spot within a matter of minutes. The only trouble was, the space had gone through so many iterations in the years since Jerry Maguire had been shot, that it was a bit of a struggle for me to figure out what restaurant had been in operation at the time of the filming. Finally (after scanning through at least 25 Google search results pages), I came across this 2007 article which stated that an eatery named Café Figaro had once been located at 9010 Melrose Avenue and that its walls had been covered with “ticky tacky newspaper decoupages.” Eureka! With that information in hand, I did a Google search for “Jerry Maguire” and “Café Figaro” and turned up this post which confirmed the find. Woot woot!

Café Figaro first opened its doors in 1969. (Apparently, Bill Cosby was one of the initial investors.) It was founded by Tom Ziegler, who, in the 1950s, had pioneered a coffee shop of the same name on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker Streets in Manhattan. When a rent hike forced Tom to close that eatery in 1969, he packed up all of its interior decor and migrated west to Los Angeles where he launched a new, larger Figaro. You can read a 1970 news article about the L.A. site shortly after its opening here. (Interestingly, a man named Ben Fishbein re-opened the Manhattan Café Figaro in 1975, six years after Ziegler had been forced out. The re-vamp proved extremely successful and remained in operation until 2008. You can read more about the East Coast Figaro’s history here.)

Café Figaro closed down in 1997, a whopping 28 years after its founding. The interior of the space was subsequently gutted and the Kass Bah steakhouse, which you can see of a photograph of here, opened in its place. By the summer of 2001, the Kass Bah had called it quits. Following that closure, the property went through numerous iterations – it was the Parisian Room, then Santo Coyote and then Murano, prior to which it was completely gutted once again. When Murano shuttered, the site became The Artichoke’s Heart, then, after yet another remodel (this one not as major as the first two, which were complete overhauls), Smoke. Since Smoke’s closing in 2013, the venue has remained vacant. It absolutely boggles my mind that Mike was able to locate a spot that had not only changed hands no less than six times, but had been completely gutted twice. Hats off to him!

In Jerry Maguire, Café Figaro stood in for Cronin’s, the “crowded” restaurant where Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr) rather comically fired Jerry. During the scene, Bob delivered this diatribe, one of my favorite from the movie – “What about me? You know what I went through knowing I was gonna have to fire my mentor? Carrying that around in my head for a week! Could you get past yourself for a second?”

Not surprisingly, while the general structure and set-up remain the same, the restaurant’s interior looks completely different today than it did onscreen. You can check out some photographs of Café Figaro’s interior from the early 1970s here and here, though, and see that it did indeed match what appeared in Jerry Maguire.

Café Figaro’s exterior (which was only seen in a limited view in Jerry Maguire) has also been remodeled since filming took place, but is still somewhat recognizable.

Thankfully, the space across the street, which was a children’s gym at the time that Jerry Maguire was filmed, has not changed over the years and still looks pretty much exactly the same as it did onscreen.

As does the building located next door to Café Figaro, which Jerry rushes by in the scene while on his way back to his office.

Mike and I were both floored to see that the manhole cover that was shown in the close-up of Jerry running was still there. Love that!

Me doing my best Jerry impersonation. Winking smile

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former Café Figaro space from Jerry Maguire is located at 9010 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. The building that Tom Cruise runs by in the movie is located next door at 9006 Melrose Avenue. The manhole cover that he walks over can be found just east of that building’s front door.