Cafe Interior

 

Tonal Blur

 

French Cafe Life

 

Eat Healthy

 

Farmers' Market

 

The Bounty

 

L.A. Farmers' Market

 

Tower At The Grove

 

The Grove

 

Strolling

 

Food Court

 

Iconic

 

Pocket Change at Cafe Cordiale (now closed)

 

Back at the Baked Potato

Thomas Wolfe said, famously, you can’t go home again.  Nonsense!  Saturday night, I went home, and for once, I found nothing had changed.

A huge chunk of my high school years was spent at the Baked Potato in North Hollywood.  My friends and I generously thought of ourselves as musicians.  We were too cool for school.  In reality, we were dateless and desperate.  Rather than admit our inability to get laid or be accepted into the cool group, we formed our own allegedly suave clique and spent our time at the Baked Potato, music nerds to the core.

The band we went to see with religious devotion was Don Randi and Quest; the name alone smells like the 1970s.  Randi was the keyboardist for a group of studio musicians in the 60s and 70s known as the Wrecking Crew.  A lot of their work became part of producer-turned-murderer Phil Spector’s legendary Wall of Sound.

In 1970, Randi opened the club in North Hollywood and Quest became the house band.  The place was a hangout for L.A.’s best studio musicians—Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather, Lee Ritenour and Alex Acuna.  So many others.  The posters from those gigs are tacked up on the walls, faded and torn, a kind of Los Angeles musical history wallpaper.

When I arrived Saturday night, I was surprised to find nothing had changed.  Well, almost nothing.  Don Randi’s seven-foot grand piano and Rhodes electric keyboard/synthesizer combo have been replaced by a single Yamaha digital keyboard.  Better sound.  Only a little more room in the tiny space.  Randi’s son, Justin, now runs the place and tends bar.  He also sings, stepping into his father’s set for a few Neil Diamond numbers.  The air inside the club is historical, musty and warm, cozy on an end-of-summer, first-days-of-fall evening.

Not a single musician remains from my high school era Quest, except for Don Randi himself.  This didn’t surprise me.  The personnel was never set in stone, but subject to who was available on a particular night.  The line-up on Saturday was Larry Klimas on Woodwinds, Frank Fabio on guitar, Chris Roy on bass, Peter Korpela on percussion, and Todd Wolf on drums.  Halfway through the first set, drummer Miles Robinson of the Fifth Dimension sat in.  He was the one we all idolized back in high school.  He is an incredible, energetic performer whose presence on this night seemed to revitalize Don Randi as they ran through the chord changes of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.”

The music was as dated as the ruffled tuxedo shirts we didn’t wear to prom (dateless, remember), but it was a nice trip down memory lane.  And actually, after my fellow musicians graduated high school and went off to college, I did take a few young ladies there, including my future wife who on this recent Saturday night also found the music a little too middle-of-the-road smooth jazz.

Don Randi, himself, was in fine form.  He talks more now than I remembered.  Maybe it’s because he has a book coming out:  You’ve Heard These Hands:  From the Wall of Sound to the Wrecking Crew and Other Incredible Stories (Hal Leonard Books, 2015).  The stories he offered up between songs were interesting and added to the historical vibe of the club.

On a more pedestrian level, the drinks were small and expensive, but strong, and the food was terrific:  all kinds of stuffed baked potatoes the size of footballs.  I had the excellent chicken salad (yes, they do also offer salads) and my wife and I split a chicken parmesan potato—more than enough for two.

I enjoyed my sojourn in the past and I’d definitely go back.  The Baked Potato is part of L.A. music history.  Unlike my high school days, I’d go in for one of the other fine groups on the schedule.  Don Randi and Quest are a treasured memory for me now, but like a favorite childhood toy one has outgrown, it is time to move on to other experiences.

The Hamlet Returns

A few months ago, I wrote about a restaurant in my neighborhood that had been a part of my life for more than three decades.  Hamburger Hamlet closed in July, headed for bankruptcy court.  The windows looked blankly out on Van Nuys Boulevard, and those who ambled past the place each day saw dust and idle stoves, the bar swathed in black plastic trash bags.  I held out little hope that the place would rise from the ashes and make a comeback.

So I was surprised to drive by the other day and see bus boys cleaning the windows and signs of activity.  Something was happening.  A quick Google search gave me a most welcomed result:  yes, Hamburger Hamlet was open again, under new management, guided by the owners of the Killer Shrimp restaurants, one of whom started his career at Hamburger Hamlet working alongside original owners Marilyn and Harry Lewis.  Looking over the newly reconstituted menu, it is clear the owners wanted to bring back the classic hamburgers and dishes made famous in the original restaurants both here in Los Angeles and back east.

Earlier this week, I stopped in for dinner and received another surprise.  One of my former students, Dustin Belvedere, is the Director of Operations.  He greeted us at our table and we were able to reminisce about the days of yore.  Interestingly, he clearly remembered being assigned summer reading when he was in my junior high school English class.  In short, he hated having to read during the summer, and his family continues to tease him about it even now.  On those long ago days of summer break, if he became annoying, his parents would command him to leave them alone and “go read.”  In spite of his lackluster enthusiasm for books over the summer, it was good to see how well his life had turned out.

The food was, as the old Hamlet sign used to say, “simply marvelous.”  The lobster bisque and split pea soup are back, as are many of the classic burgers that had dropped off the menu in the last few years.  The ambiance remains intact, and some of the wait staff have also returned for another go around.  Of course, they are still ironing out the kinks—the restaurant will undergo remodeling after the first of the year, and more classic food items will be added back onto the menu soon—it was comforting to know our favorite comfort food place is back in operation.

After dinner, we walked to the newsstand at the corner of Ventura and Van Nuys Boulevards for our usual magazines and reading material.  The air was autumn crisp with a slight breeze.  For a week night, there were a lot of people enjoying the transition to November in southern California.  When I last wrote about Hamburger Hamlet, I said that things did not look promising for a resurgence of the brand.  I am very happy to say that at least for now, I was wrong.  Hamburger Hamlet is back.

Goodbye Hamburger Hamlet

I have lived most of my life in the same five square mile radius in the San Fernando Valley.  I was born in Van Nuys, raised in Pacoima, and started my married life in Sherman Oaks where I still remain planted.  I’ve watched the area change, and in just a few short years, I hardly recognize the place.  Now I can add another landmark to those that have disappeared.  If I had to designate a special place that meant something to my wife and me, Hamburger Hamlet in Sherman Oaks would be it.  We had so many dates there, and even when we went elsewhere for an evening on the town, inevitably we would wind up there at closing time for a baked apple or that chocolate cake.  Chicken wings with apricot sauce with a little backgammon.  The mushroom burger, the Marilyn burger, the sides that begged an order (“Eat the sides, I pray you” as the menu said).  Lobster bisque, French onion soup.  The décor:  red leather booths, dark interior but not too dark, the traffic outside on Van Nuys Boulevard.  If we were across town, there were other Hamlets to visit:  Brentwood, downtown, Pasadena, Sunset Strip.

My wife dragged me into the restaurant early on because she had been coming there since high school.  Ten dollars got a platter of those chicken wings with apricot sauce and a backgammon set.  The bill was cheap and the food excellent, but the Hamlet was always more than a burger place.  When we decided to marry, our first apartment was in Sherman Oaks, so the Hamlet remained our second dining room.  Every momentous occasion, the tragic and the glorious, was rehashed in those booths.  Often, after a great meal, we’d walk a half a block to the news stand at Van Nuys and Ventura Boulevard to get our evening’s reading material.

 

Our first teaching jobs in west L.A. meant we could spend many late afternoons at the HH on Sepulveda Boulevard waiting for traffic to dissipate.  We turned the other teachers on to it, and before you knew it, the place became our second faculty room.  When we switched areas and schools, we’d go to the Hamburger Hamlet on Wilshire near the Wiltern Theater with colleagues and friends and talk late into the evenings planning how to save the very poor Catholic school nearby.  It was all about hopes and dreams and memories in those leather booths.  We were on a first name basis with all the wait staff and tipped them liberally from our meager teacher’s salaries.

But always we returned home to the Sherman Oaks Hamburger Hamlet.  That was our base, our own.  The waiters knew what to bring us before we even ordered.  We watched people get promoted, from greeter to waiter to assistant manager.

The restaurant itself had a storied history, as detailed in founder Marilyn Lewis’ book, “Marilyn, Are You Sure You Can Cook?” He Asked (Ten Speed Press, 2000).  She and her husband Harry Lewis opened the first Hamburger Hamlet on the famed Sunset Strip in 1950.  The rent was $250 a month.  The name came from Harry, a character actor, and his desire to open a hamburger place.  He chose Hamlet because Shakespeare’s character is the high point of any actor’s career.  The couple, in later years, was also responsible for opening Kate Mantellini’s in Beverly Hills, which also closed its doors recently.  Hamburger Hamlet, however, was their finest hour.  One by one, they spread out across the city:  a second location in Westwood, a third in Beverly Hills followed by a fourth in the same area, and then on into downtown and eventually, across the country to Washington D.C.  When Marilyn and Harry got out of the business in 1987, they sold Hamburger Hamlet for 33 million dollars.

The stories are legendary.  In her book, Marilyn recounts how the couple threw a party at their home to test the menu before the first HH opened.  When she went to start cooking, she discovered the gas had been shut off.  She’d forgotten to pay the bill.  She begged the gas man who answered her call to open the valve, promising to feed him for the rest of his life.  He did, and she did, even when the man got married and brought his wife and kids into the restaurant.  Lots of actors and celebrities frequented their locations, especially in Beverly Hills.  The most famous episode in the restaurant’s history was when actors Jeff Chandler, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tony Curtis took over the cooking and running of the restaurant for a weekend while Marilyn and Harry went to Vegas to get married.  Imagine going to your local hamburger joint and having Sammy Davis Jr. ask for your order.

Hamburger Hamlet was one of the first restaurants to employ African-American women as waitresses.  Marilyn opened a waitressing school for them in the restaurant and offered them good salaries and benefits.  This did not sit well with some whites in the city.  When the Westwood location opened, the couple found their restaurant windows pelted with tomatoes.  During the Watts riots in 1965, many of their employees could not get to work because of the civil unrest.  The couple hired transportation to go into Watts and south central L.A. to pick up employees and bring them to the restaurants.  They also put many of them up in motels nearby so they wouldn’t miss out on work.  Because of this, Marilyn and Harry received death threats.

After I heard the restaurant closed, I went to see for myself.  There is a sign on the door promising to reopen, however all the restaurants in other locations have closed with Sherman Oaks being the last one.  There have been challenges before:  several owners after the Lewises and the Northridge earthquake in 1994.  The place always rebounded, but in today’s uncertain economic times, the future does not look promising.  As Bob Hope used to sing when signing off of his television specials, thanks for the memories.  So long, Hamburger Hamlet; it’s been a good run.