Time Hasn’t Changed the Tick Tock

When my grandparents moved to Hollywood, it wasn’t to be near the movies, God knows. It was because they were Prohibitionists, and Hollywood was a Temperance town that didn’t allow liquor. Coincidentally, though, when teetotaling Hollywood righteously forced the only bar in town out of business, the building was taken over by a film company, the first of what turned out to be quite a few, and the little Temperance utopia was set on a whole new trajectory, which my grandparents didn’t like a whole lot.

Those were the days when Los Angeles was the only halfway large city in the country where Dries outnumbered Wets. There were classes of restaurant that specifically catered to nondrinkers, such as the cafeteria and the more elegant tea room. With the years these dwindled away, and by the time I was born, just about the only restaurant my grandparents could bear to eat at was the enduring pride of the tea rooms, the Tick Tock. They’d never have to behold anyone’s lips touching the Unclean Thing there.

A couple of years ago when I heard that the Tick Tock had started serving wine, I had a sinking feeling that it must have fallen on desperate times. The place does rather look its age--the neon clock signs on the facade no longer tick--but I am pleased to report that basically the Tick Tock is unchanged. It’s still a respectable family restaurant (just off the squalid corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga!), there are still 48 antique clocks on the walls, it still serves full dinners at quite reasonable prices (and offers discounts for regular customers) and the food has not changed a bit. I can’t even say I’ve actually seen any diners drinking wine.

Frankly, wine does not make a lot of sense with this food anyway, because it is decidedly not a cuisine that developed with wine in mind. It’s the kind of Midwestern cooking that was just about all there was in Los Angeles restaurants 50 years ago when the Tick Tock was young, the kind of food a lot of us grew up on: sweets and meats.

Sweets, that’s the first impression you get. There’s something sweet at virtually every course (only full dinners are served, nothing a la carte). You pick two appetizers, one from a Column A that includes such artless choices as a glass of tomato juice or a tiny pot of shrimp in Thousand Island dressing . . . or fruit cocktail. Column B is even more likely to be sweet, perhaps salad with orange-colored “French” dressing or “whipped aspic” (cherry jello with fruit, topped with mayonnaise).

Once you’ve worked your way through these, you get a little paper cup of sherbet (they do not pretend that this is to “cleanse the palate”--it’s just some sherbet). Then you get two rolls, one of them being the Tick Tock’s famous “gooey roll” with its thick sauce of sugar, butter, cinnamon, clove and possibly maple flavoring. That’s to hold you through the relatively sugar-free entree, where of course there may be raisins in the turkey stuffing and applesauce with the pork, until you arrive at dessert.

It would seem barbarous to a Frenchman, and after marinating in haute cuisine for a couple of decades I can scarcely believe I once ate this way myself, but of course it does taste good, even if you do come away from the table thinking you’ll never eat again. It may not be healthful food according to the surgeon general, but there is a reason why we think of it as wholesome, and not just the associations with PTA, gardening and good works. It’s traditional, and thereby surprisingly honest at times. The only vegetables on your plate might be peas and mashed potatoes, but the mashed potatoes are made from actual potatoes (the peas are certainly frozen).

Some of the entrees are the sort of thing the West Side’s new-generation “diners” have started serving; some, such as roast turkey, are so much trouble they don’t do them very often. Some are so authentic the new “diners” may never get around to them, such as liver and onions, the liver simply dredged with flour and fried. My favorite is the hamburger steak, a thick oblong patty of beef that tastes as sweet as I remember it from my childhood. Like most entrees, it has no seasoning but salt and pepper.

The main-course meat is often obscured--or saved--by the existence of a lot of beef gravy, as with the meat loaf, a big, soft and rather neutral-tasting chunk of ground meat, or the dry and flavorless Swiss steak. The omnipresent gravy can make it hard to tell whether you’re eating the pork or the turkey (how to tell: applesauce with the pork, cranberry with the turkey), but of course it’s tasty gravy. And as a Midwestern restaurant, the Tick Tock has no real affinity with fish. You might find red snapper or orange roughy with tartar sauce, but it will taste as little like fish as possible.

The pies are best when made with seasonal ingredients, such as peach or green apple; I’d pass on the stodgy cherry pie. The cakes are unremarkable, the sundaes and parfaits simple and pleasantly old-fashioned.

My grandparents, who never learned the slightest sense of historical irony from the failure of the Great Temperance Experiment in Hollywood, would still recognize the place, and feel vindicated.

Tick Tock Restaurant, 1716 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 463-7576. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Wine and beer only. Parking lot (65 with validation). All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $17 to $29.