RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Taste of Nostalgia: Roy’s Back and Shain’s Got Him

When I was growing up in a Boston suburb, my father took us regularly to a Chinese restaurant called the Gold Coin. It was just about the most exciting thing we did as a family, and I always feel a twinge of nostalgia thinking about it.

For one thing, the owner always treated us as if we were visiting royalty. As we walked in the door, Sam King would pump my father’s hand and say, “Joe, where you been?” even if we’d eaten there on Tuesday. Then he would pat us kids on the head, like a kindly uncle who was hiding a pile of birthday presents.

Doubtless this is the type of nostalgia that fueled Roy’s on Sunset in the late ‘70s, where a distinctly un-Chinese man named Roy Silver held forth nightly with his loyal band of friends and celebrities. Silver’s food bore a distinct resemblance to what many of us ate in our childhood--dishes doused liberally with the same dark soy restaurateurs such as Sam King used, and sweetened with heaps of sugar to tantalize the child in us all.

Roy’s on Sunset closed in the early ‘80s and his brand of cooking faded away, replaced by dim sum emporiums, live seafood halls and San Gabriel Valley noodle houses. But Silver didn’t fade away, and neither did his friends, many of whom couldn’t wait for him to reopen someday. A few months ago, Silver did just that, with the help of boyhood friend Don Shain of Shain’s Restaurant in Sherman Oaks.

Now you can journey back (well, once a week) to those thrilling days of yesteryear by visiting Roy’s at Shain’s, an inner sanctum of Shain’s Restaurant that Silver takes over on Thursday evenings. The revived Roy’s, using Shain’s kitchen facilities, is cooking up dishes from his restaurant’s halcyon days, serving them on a set menu that repeats weekly.

Shain’s itself is dark and clubby, but when you step through Roy’s private door, you enter a different dimension. It’s a blue and white room with mirrored walls and dim lighting that seems to get dimmer as the evening progresses. Chopsticks and silverware are laid out nicely on all the tables. “Ghost Riders in the Sky” might be playing as you walk in, and Silver, power ponytail and all, will immediately rush over to greet you, just the way Mr. King used to greet my dad.

“I’m Roy Silver,” he will say, squinting if he doesn’t remember you, “and I want you to feel as if you’re in my living room.” And you will, of course--even if it becomes clear during the course of the evening that you are among the only customers in the place not on intimate terms with him.

Shortly after the formalities, a waitress appears. She explains that there is a set menu, that things are served family-style and that you may have seconds on any or all dishes. Then she tells you how delicious everything is going to be and instructs the runner to bring the food.

The first course, described as Sichuan noodles, is brought out in a huge glass bowl (as are all dishes here). This turns out to be some rather bland, lukewarm spaghetti mingled with cut-up scallions, and neither the hot mustard, sticky plum sauce or chili oil brought alongside can bring it to life.

Then comes a bowl of hot and sour soup, neither hot nor sour, really, but a brown broth drowning hunks of white soy bean curd, lots of whole black mushrooms and slivers of Napa cabbage. It’s even good, in a health-food store kind of way.

Any resemblance to health food ends abruptly with the main courses, though. Five of them come out next, all but one (the bland deep-fried chicken fingers with the grandiose misnomer “600-year-old chicken”) being coated in that dark soy sauce, a la Boston in the ‘50s.

The best of them would have to be the barbecued spare ribs, meaty and messy and as dark as pitch. The ribs have a sweet, cloying taste but hit the nostalgia button just right. The worst of them must be “drunken shrimp,” which are shrimp in the shell that look as if they have been cooked on a griddle and taste as if they had never had a drink in their lives.

Accompanying these are mixed Chinese vegetables in a pool of soy-flavored sauce and a dark pork fried rice dominated by giant chunks of sugary, barbecued pork. This last dish really jogs my memory. It is exactly like the one I used to eat at the Gold Coin.

Dessert is frozen Snickers and Milky Way bars, one of the trademarks from the original Roy’s on Sunset.

I have to admit that I had a good time at Roy’s at Shain’s, but it is the kind of thing you do only once. The body can only tolerate so much nostalgia, after all, and that goes double for soy sauce.

Roy’s at Shain’s, 14016 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 986-5510. Dinner 6 to 10 p.m. Thursdays only. Full bar. Valet parking in rear. All major cards. Set menu $25 per person.