Junior’s Goes Upscale : The Sauls had one of California’s highest-grossing restaurants . . . then they remodeled

When Marvin Saul decides to do something, he does a job of work.

He just remodeled Junior’s. And when I say remodeled, I don’t mean that he repositioned the revolving dessert case or changed the color of the carpeting. He ripped out the wine bar, the dark wood and the pictures of antique cars. The entrance hall between the front door and the dining room is big enough and slick enough now to support a few lanes of championship bowling. The bakery and deli counters look generically neon-cheerful, as if they had been plucked intact from a Ralphs in a transitional neighborhood. (Where you used to see hanging salamis over the deli case, there’s now a display of Junior’s-brand French wine.)

The result?

“Twenty-five years of going to Junior’s has ended for me,” my father said when he got a look at the place.

“I think I’m going to go to Canter’s from now on,” the law student in the next booth whined.

“It’s terrible,” my mother mouthed from her hospital bed. “Just awful.”

“So, this is a deli?” said a New Yorker waiting for a table.

Uh, well, Junior’s acts like a deli, I guess, even though it doesn’t much look like one anymore.

Saul built his Junior’s Delicatessen from a tacky Westwood storefront into a fortress of pastrami, with an oversized brick facade intimidating enough to withstand matzo-ball assaults by the Stage or Nate n’ Al’s or whatever. Junior’s is perennially, according to Nation’s Restaurant News, among the highest-grossing restaurants in California. Generations of Westside Jewish kids grew up on Junior’s cold cuts and blintzes; Junior’s is also the favorite hangout of the Compton gangster-rap posse N.W.A. Junior’s is where Armand Hammer goes for chicken soup--and he’s been known to sit at the counter.

Nate n’ Al’s, the Beverly Hills deli, gets away with a haimisch feel--its largely Brooklyn-bred customers come to be reminded of home. Places like Zucky’s and Factor’s Famous are more or less coffee shops that serve tongue sandwiches. Canter’s on Fairfax has a lock on L.A.’s last major concentration of working-class Jews. And the new glitzy places, Stage and Carnegie and Starky’s, are Disneyland versions of Olde New York.

Junior’s, like the Westside it serves, is an assimilated, hard-working sort of place, proud to be Jewish but even prouder of its position in the scheme of things. (People have always dressed for lunch at Junior’s the way they do when they, say, shop at Neiman-Marcus.) Saul’s advertising slogans have included both “The Rolls-Royce of Delicatessens” and “A Touch of Class”; he’s claimed Junior’s is not merely the best deli in the area, but the best mid-priced restaurant too. Now it’s just incongruous.

The restaurant area seems modeled on an enormous remodeled living room from a $2-million Phoenix tract home, complete with mini-blinds, bland pastels and a picture-frame thing on the ceiling surrounding 300 square feet of hand-painted trompe l’oeil clouds and swimming-pool blue sky. (You’d almost expect to see everybody in the kitchen cooking at an enormous kitchen island.) Somebody did a tacky room-size Junior’s mural, maybe the same guy who painted the ceiling.

Of course Junior’s still serves deli food, no surprises. Well, some. They’ve improved the chicken soup--put more chicken in it--and you get a dish of whole kosher dills free instead of the usual few spears. If the waitress likes you, your table will get a whole loaf of nice rye bread before dinner now. Those are the good things. Pastrami sandwiches and such are dependably good, among the best in town, though they lack the unctuous garlicky clout of Langer’s locally or the intense smoky tang of Wolf’s in New York. The specialty sandwiches, still named after classic cars instead of celebrities, are as thick as encyclopedias.

And the waitresses are still motherly:

“Did you like the egg cream?” the waitress asked.

“It was fine,” I said.

“But was it good?”

“Sure,” I said, unsure.

“You waited an extra-long time, so I made it with cream instead of milk. I wanted it to be nice for you.”

Be nice, and they’ll tell you the truth:

“Ahhh, honey, don’t get the brisket platter. It’s so expensive, and what do you get more than with the brisket sandwich? I’ll tell you. You get some vegetables. And believe me, for these vegetables it’s not worth the money. You want a potato pancake? I’ll give you a potato pancake with the sandwich, no charge.”

It’s true, Saul raised prices. Other crimes? Junior’s toasts the bagels automatically when you order a lox platter, unless you ask them not to. (Untoasted the bagels, baked on the premises, are kind of soft and bready.) The mashed-potato-stuffed perogen are dry and tasteless; the borscht not worth the beets.

Even so, I eventually managed to talk my father into another meal at the new Junior’s, only his second since the remodel.

“How about a hug for an old man,” he said to the waitress.

“Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you,” she said.

“Er . . . er . . . My wife’s been sick. How about a hug.”

“Sure,” she said. “That’s too bad.”

He ate Nova Scotia lox and a Diet Coke; he refused bites of my herring, my latkes, and my girlfriend’s tongue-on-rye. The waitress brought him seconds on pickles and extra rye bread.

“So, Pop, how was the Novy platter?” I asked.

“It tasted very much like lox. You can quote me on that.”

And some things never change:

“Are you sure you can pay for this?” my father said when I reached for the check . “Here, let me buy you a salami.”

Junior’s Restaurant, 2379 Westwood Blvd., W.L.A. (213) 475-5771. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Dinner for 2, food only, $14-$30.