THEY’RE COOKIN UP A RENAISSANCE ON . . . RESTAURANT ROW

Once upon a visit to Los Angeles, Brendan Behan, the late Irish playwright who was as renowned for his marathon tippling as he was for his stagecraft, patronized an estimated 30 restaurants and barrooms during a memorable three-hour spree.

Behan consumed a single drink in every one of the establishments, which were all on the same lively thoroughfare. As he emerged from the last, fuddled but immensely gratified, he teetered on the sidewalk and supposedly proclaimed: “This is one street a man can walk on with the utmost confidence.”

The street along which Behan staggered in 1961 was La Cienega Boulevard, and it was indeed one on which a man of capacity could find drink generous enough to match an outsized thirst. But more important, it also was one that catered to diners with prodigious appetites, a quality that earned it the name that a four-block stretch between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards still bears today: Restaurant Row.

Restaurant Row has changed mightily since Behan’s binge, but not its reputation for having perhaps the greatest concentration of quality restaurants in the city. Consider: On a busy Saturday night, according to an educated guess, as many as 6,000 meals will be served in about 35 eating establishments strung along it.

The street’s reputation has been half a century in the making, mirroring in many ways the city that it caters to. It was built from unpromising beginnings when La Cienega was an inhospitable swamp on the far reaches of the city, crested with a roar of notoriety in the 1940s and ‘50s, waned beginning in the mid-’60s as tastes changed and the suburbs grew--but now appears to be on the ascent again.

Those who work there and others in the industry maintain, in fact, that Restaurant Row is enjoying a renaissance. How sturdy it is and how long it will last are uncertain. But certainly the street has never claimed such a confounding mix of different places to eat, ranging from the most elegant to the most pedestrian.

Alongside the durable Lawry’s Prime Rib and almost cheek by jowl with the multistarred L’Ermitage and L’Orangerie stand such chic new entries as Bistango’s and 385 North, not one but two Fatburgers, plus popular 24-hour cafes and a clutch of pizza parlors. And more are coming.

In such a fast-paced business in such a trendy city, restaurants inevitably come and go, but by and large the eating establishments that now line La Cienega between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards appear to be thriving.

The variety is such that a diner can find on today’s Restaurant Row provender to appease the most demanding or indifferent of appetites, from hamburger to pate, from lasagna to mousse, from hot dogs to duck salad, curries, moussaka and English finger sandwiches.

“There’s still the best selection of restaurants in the city along that street,” said Gerald Breitbart, a top executive of the California Restaurant Assn.

Roger Coleman, president and chief executive of S. E. Rykoff & Co., a distributor that has been supplying Los Angeles-area restaurants with foodstuffs for 75 years, said his firm’s business with La Cienega restaurants has “definitely” increased during the past two years. He believes that the foundation for Restaurant Row’s renaissance is grounded in the fact that the pioneers on the street remained, even in times of decline, “awfully good operators who maintained the quality of their places.”

While mourning the disappearance of many fine establishments that helped create La Cienega’s reputation--the Tail o’ the Cock and the House of Murphy, to name two that he still regards as “institutions”--Jean Leon, proprietor of Beverly Hills’ La Scala for more than 30 years and a venerable observer of the Southern California restaurant scene, said, “The street remains a very important street for dining in Los Angeles.”

“God, there’s such diversity on this street! From 24-hour places to barbecues to two of the finest restaurants in the country,” Gabrielle Boone said. “To me, La Cienega today has no place to go but up.”

Boone, a 30-year-old native New Yorker, is one of an optimistic new breed of entrepreneurs on the street. With her husband, Spike Jones Jr., 37, she owns Pennyfeathers, near where hip Melrose Avenue dead-ends. The airy 24-hour bistro could be a metaphor for the sanguine spirit prevailing on Restaurant Row.

“What you’ve got today is a new Restaurant Row, a contemporary Restaurant Row,” said Jones, son of the late bandleader. “When we built our place, we wanted a restaurant for our contemporaries. A smaller boutique kind of place.”

The restaurant, patterned on the Pennyfeathers that Boone’s mother operates in New York’s Greenwich Village, opened two years ago. Today, Boone says, “I’m thrilled I’m on La Cienega,” and she suggested that Pennyfeathers would not have performed as it has if situated anywhere else.

Educated Coddling

During the day, the clientele includes employees of the many art galleries in the area, and in the wee hours, according to Boone, it’s filled with many from the nearby entertainment industry.

Boone also contends that her clientele’s appetite is a distinctive one that needs an educated coddling. “People eat differently on the East Cost and the West Coat,” she explained. “In New York . . . they’re not as health conscious. And they go to the same place day in and day out. Here, people are trying new places all the time. The customer is much fickler.”

Other new operators on Restaurant Row share her enthusiasm, and are demonstrating it by investing in the street:

- Mauro Vincente, owner of the pricey Art Deco Rex downtown, is building a big cafe two blocks south of Santa Monica Boulevard that he describes as “a different kind of Italian” restaurant.

Vincente said he was attracted to Restaurant Row by what he saw as a developing resurgence. “I noticed it about two years ago,” he recalled. “That got me interested. The street also is close to Beverly Hills, and there’s a lot of action there.”

- Donald Salk, a dentist, is a partner in 385 North, which opened about two years ago in what was once the Islander, where customers were trotted to the entrance in rickshaws. “We looked around and saw a renaissance taking place,” he said. “The area generally speaking always has been an artistic and culinary center, and we could go into an existing building rather than starting from scratch.

‘It’s Really Incredible’

“If you took a map and drew a circle of about a mile around this place, you’d realize that within that circle there’s everything that brings people into an area,” said Salk. “Restaurants, art galleries, theater. It’s the closest thing to the West Side of Manhattan. It’s really incredible what’s happening on this street.”

- Christos Haritonides, a Cyprus-born owner of a Greek restaurant in Vancouver, came to Los Angeles about two years ago wanting to open a similar taverna here. He settled on a building started in the 1930s by actor Charles Boyer.

Locating on the Row proved an advantage “because in a city of this size where there are roughly 12,000 restaurants, it’s easy to get lost,” he said, and added, “I also felt I was in good company.”

- Jullianne Gorski, a native of Australia, and her husband, Richard, own the spanking new Paddington’s Tea Room, which opened last year in a remodeled antique shop.

“We looked all over,” said Jullianne Gorski, who met her husband while working in the Australian Consulate here in 1951. “We looked in Westwood, West L.A., Santa Monica and were frustrated about finding a place. We couldn’t find the charm and atmosphere of a whole street that we finally found here on La Cienega. It has a mystique. Restaurant Row is a traditionalist street which is just right for us. Quaint with all the antique and decorator shops, but not too funky.”

‘We . . . Help Each Other’

Jullianne Gorski said that shortly after Paddington’s arrival on La Cienega, L’Ermitage’s manager crossed the street and promised to shoo patrons her way. “We can all help each other,” she said. “It’s such a diversified street.”

- And then there is Rich Melman. He is a partner in a firm that is planning to open an Ed Debevic’s in a vacant building that formerly housed Richlor’s and Mediterrania, both Lawry’s enterprises.

The original Ed Debevic’s opened in Chicago about three years ago to overnight success. It is the re-creation of a 1950s diner, designed, as one critic said, “to appeal to every guy who ever fell out of an aqua-colored booth while flirting with a waitress in a rayon dress.”

Ed Debevic exists only in Rich Melman and his associates’ imaginations.

“The one here,” said Melman, “will be similar but different. We’re changing the menu a bit to meet California tastes--without serving quiche. Ed would never do that.”

Rich History

The building itself has a rich history. It was built in 1941 by Lawrence Frank, co-founder of Lawry’s Prime Rib, just north of his original La Cienega restaurant. He called it Richlor’s after his son Richard and his daughter Lorraine.

“We just loved it. It was the old Restaurant Row,” Melman said. “It makes people feel it’s been there for years and years.”

Many restaurateurs said they see the arrival of Ed Debevic’s as a potential high point in La Cienega’s resurgence.

But a disinterested expert suggests that Mauro Vincente’s new venture and the opening of Ed Debevic’s may signal the end of the era of big free-standing restaurants on the street.

Land is too costly and parking is at a premium, according to Robert L. Patterson, managing partner of Laventhol & Howarth, which does accounting and consulting for restaurants. Patterson predicted that future “white-tablecloth restaurants” on the Row will be contained in large hotels and office buildings.

“You have to do an abnormally high volume to justify a free-standing restaurant anymore, and not just on La Cienega,” Patterson said. He added that new restaurants are likely to come about through “recycling,” such as 385 North going into the old Islander.

As a matter of fact, that historically has been the case on the Row, as in the whole industry.

‘It Puzzles Me’

“What gets me is how places changed hands and change hands,” said Bill Kaiser, who for 35 years managed Smith’s Fish Shanty which, after Lawry’s Prime Rib, holds today’s record for longevity in the same guise on the Row. “It puzzles me. Restaurants would be successful, yet they would change hands.”

Bernie Tohl, who still owns several parcels of land on the street, at one time operated four restaurants simultaneously on La Cienega. Two, the Islander and the Captain’s Table, maintained the same identity while he ran them.

But the other two experienced a series of incarnations even under his single ownership: the Red Snapper became the Innkeeper and later the Lobster Barrel; the building is now vacant. The Picadilly became the Blue Boar Tavern, the Cappuccino and then Casa Cugat; today it is a vacant lot.

Tohl, who is out of the restaurant business now, said: “A big new restaurant is not worth the price and the gamble. We’re talking about a minimum of 2 to 3 million to open one today.”

Tohl suggested that an establishment such as Pennyfeathers may be the prototype of the future on La Cienega: “I see an end to Restaurant Row as far as building new large restaurants.”

New Prototype

A prototype for a restaurant in a large office building already exists in Gaylord’s, an Indian restaurant, which has made its mark in a new office building at 50 N. La Cienega. And the prestigious Ma Maison, once on Melrose, will be revived when a new hotel is completed just north of the Beverly Center.

During good times and bad, the 48-year-old Lawry’s Prime Rib has been been the single steadiest presence on Restaurant Row.

The spark behind the Prime Rib was Lawrence Frank, a co-founder of the Van de Kamp chain of bakeries. His wife was a Van de Kamp, and he was already in business with his brothers-in-law in both the baking business and in the Tam O’Shanter restaurant in Los Feliz.

Richard Frank, Lawrence’s son and now head of Lawry’s restaurant operations, remembers the days in the 1930s when his dad would drive around town looking for a central location for a place serving only prime rib.

“La Cienega was a speedway in those days with no traffic on it,” he recalled. “There were fields of mustard on either side.”

Choosing a Name

Lawrence Frank found a building at 150 La Cienega that previously had been occupied by two failed restaurants and today is the site of Lawry’s Westside Broiler. He and one brother-in-law, Walter Van de Kamp, entered a partnership and bought the building. They planned to name the restaurant Larry’s after deciding that the bakery business would be called Van de Kamp’s because Frank thought “that name sounds better.”

But the two partners eventually agreed, said Richard Frank, that “Larry’s didn’t sound classy enough. So they stuck a ‘w’ in place of one of the ‘r’s and it became Lawry’s, which was appropriate because Lawry’s is an old English surname pronounced ‘Lorry’s.’ ”

Prime rib dinners sold for $1.25.

“Pricing always has been at the upper- to medium-end of the scale. But never out of reach of the person wanting a ‘special occasion’ dinner. Say, grandma’s birthday,” Frank said.

(Even today, the Prime Rib remains a special-occasion draw. Said Dick Powell, its present manager: “You should hear the number of times we sing ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Happy Anniversary.’ When I interview waitresses for jobs, I should ask them if they can sing.”)

One of a Kind

“We’ve been trying to duplicate its success ever since,” Richard Frank said. “We’ve come close a couple of times, but we’ve never really matched it.”

Lawry’s Prime Rib was followed, across the street and a year later, by McHenry’s Tail o’ the Cock. A year after that, Ollie Hammond’s Steak House arrived. The former shut it doors a year ago; Ollie Hammond’s in 1979.

Shelton McHenry, recalled Richard Frank, “was a good-looking former bartender whose place attracted the fraternity and sorority set from USC and the Yuppies of the day. But as his customers got older, they moved away to Newport Beach and places like that.”

During World War II, restaurateurs had to scramble to find foodstuffs. But the war years were among the Row’s liveliest.

With beef hard to come by, Lawry’s specialty became roast prime turkey, and Ollie Hammond financed a former fraternity brother’s chicken and egg business in Claremont to ensure a reliable supply for his menu. And Shelton McHenry’s wife wrote her serviceman husband: “Would you believe they’ll even eat spaghetti?”

Showy Enterprise

Possibly the showiest enterprise to make a splash on the street arrived after the war.

Artist Peter Fairchild opened a restaurant in what is now Benihana. Fairchild’s had an air-cooled kennel, complete with a fire hydrant, which dispensed gourmet canine fare; customers deposited their pets there while they dined on pricey human delights.

The story goes that one night, possibly shortly after the war, Shelton McHenry and Lawrence Frank were dining together and the former, after reflecting on the existence at the time of seven restaurants on La Cienega just above Wilshire, said, “We’re becoming a regular Restaurant Row.”

The name stuck.

About that time, too, the restaurant surge began to creep northward. As time passed, Restaurant Row expanded to include everything between Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, particularly with the arrival just south of Santa Monica about 15 years ago of the internationally acclaimed L’Ermitage and L’Orangerie--two establishments that have set standards that other French restaurants in this part of the world try to match but rarely reach.

Long-Running Row

Thus, today the Row runs through four separate governmental jurisdictions: the cities of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and West Hollywood and the County of Los Angeles.

It was Art Wynne, senior vice president of Lawry’s, who in the 1960s prevailed on Beverly Hills to allow him to place signs--at a cost of $98.55--on either side of Wilshire, with an arrow pointing north, which read: “Restaurant Row.”

“They’ve never been repaired,” Wynne said. “The rain must keep them clean.”