Witching Hour Approaches for Historic Tick Tock Restaurant

It’s the kind of restaurant where Garrison Keillor would have eaten in Lake Wobegone and then told stories about on his “Prairie Home Companion.”

It’s the Tick Tock, a Hollywood institution for 58 years, a place that peels its own potatoes, makes its own desserts, serves fresh roast turkey and home-style Midwest meat loaf with brown gravy every day.

It’s a place with four dozen antique clocks on the dining room walls and fluted glass chandeliers that look like they came from Norman Rockwell’s grandmother’s kitchen.

It’s also a place that’s going out of business. On Aug. 28, the Tick Tock will close its doors forever, a victim of age, demography and the fickle palate of Los Angeles diners.

The problem is lack of customers. The restaurant, which was started in 1930 by a Norwegian immigrant, Art Johnson, and his wife, Helen, used to serve its famous “gooey rolls” to as many as 2,000 people a day during the ‘30s and ‘40s. But in recent years business at the Tick Tock began rapidly to slide. Now it’s down to 400 meals a day, too little to survive, according to Buzz Johnson, restaurant president since his mother, Helen, died 2 1/2 years ago.

The Tick Tock was never a celebrity restaurant for movie people (even though Francis X. Bushman was once a regular customer, as is Pee-wee Herman today). Instead, Johnson says, it was “a good old-fashioned dining place for the Hollywood community.”

“We got to know the customers. We’ve had parties here with five generations of people. . . . If someone didn’t show up for a while, we’d give them a call.”

As a result, when he announced the closing on Aug. 6, his regular customers were stunned. One woman called to make a reservation for September, Johnson said. “The cashier said it was closing in August. And she started crying on the phone.”

One man became angry. “He told my nephew, ‘What happened? Did you lose your guts?’ ”

Russ Brown, a regular customer at the Tick Tock since 1953, said that when he heard the restaurant was closing, “I felt like my house burned down. Or someone was telling you that you’re going to die in a couple of weeks.”

Part of the problem is an aging clientele. As many of the regulars died or moved away, the restaurant lost 30% of its client base.

But even more important perhaps, in an increasingly ethnic city, the Tick Tock stayed the same. It has stood in the same spot--at 1716 Cahuenga just above Hollywood Boulevard--since 1934, using the same Midwestern recipes and serving the same hearty food.

“In the ‘30s, most restaurants were like this,” Johnson said. But times have changed. “And people have forgotten about this food.”

And that, he said, is what really made him decide to get out. For the last 12 to 15 years, he’s had a dream to become a lay worker for Catholic missions in Asia. As long as people wanted to eat there, it was difficult to give up the family tradition.

“But life is short,” Johnson said. “It’s better to do what you want to do than keep alive a place that people don’t want to come to. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We carried on the tradition for 58 years. A lot of things in life don’t last forever.”