Night in a City of Dreams

L.A. is a city of make-believe, a planet of dreams, a land of Oz where all things are possible.

Stars are made here, curtains rise, spotlights go on and names appear magically on marquees.

And because this is a place of the possible, it’s a town of pretending too, of playing games on the way to the dream.

Both young and old, whether heady with new ambition or still clinging to the edge of timeworn expectations, look to a doorway of the night and hope that through it will come the someone who will make it all come true.

Welcome to the Cafe Bellissimo.

It’s an Italian restaurant in a sea of Italian restaurants in an otherwise undistinguished corner of Woodland Hills. What makes it different from the others is an element of hope on a small stage that rings with music.

I came into the place one rainy night looking for nothing more spectacular than linguine and clams, and instead got a taste of at least one of the elements that makes L.A. unique.

We’re all wrapped up in an endless dream, and the music in the Valley is part of it.

That’s not a factor limited to the Cafe Bellissimo. Restaurants all over town have singing waiters, every open audition in the city is jammed with dreamers and there isn’t a mama alive who doesn’t think her baby is tomorrow’s Streisand.

But there’s something about the Bellissimo that encapsulates an eternal quest for fame in a land where fame shines like a diamond in the sky. I think it’s the kids.

I call them kids although they are grown-up people in their 20s and even their 30s. It’s just that they aren’t complete yet, they’re still out there belting away and looking toward the doorway.

The ones I’m talking about wait tables most of the time, but every once in awhile they go to the mike and whack out a tune to a room full of people scarfing down Mama Sara’s pasta like it’s their last meal.

The restaurant is actually Sicilian and it’s run by the Bellissimo brothers, Tony and Emilio. Mama Sara is their real mama and she operates the kitchen where the Arancini di Messina is born.

They turned their restaurant into a place of music because there was always music in the small Sicilian town where they’re from, and because Anthony composes tunes and Emilio once played guitar for a group called the Standells a lifetime ago.

The night I walked in out of the rain a red-haired waitress named Sherri McManus was finishing up a table. I was ordering a glass of pinot grigio when she took to the stage and began singing.

Performing in a place where people go to eat is like trying to get a sing-along going in a graveyard. It’s really tough getting anyone’s attention.

I was at a comedy club-restaurant on amateur night once where some poor guy was on stage for 15 minutes, firing one-liners like they were bullets in Beirut, but no one but me knew he was on. Even his wife missed it.

Sherri was different. She sang a piece from “The Little Mermaid” called “Part of Your World,” and before she’d gone very far the place was as quiet as a darkened circus after the crowds had gone.

I’m nobody’s judge of good music, but I liked what I heard and later asked Sherri what she was all about.

What she’s all about is what all the kids are about at the Cafe Bellissimo. They’re waiting for the talent scout or the producer or the big-time director to swing by for Sicilian lasagna and promise to make them a star.

There’ll be a thunderclap then, and a light from heaven.

“I just want to sing,” Sherri said, bouncing between tables with an ebullience you always find in kids with stars in their heads.

They’re forever on, if you know what I mean, always center stage, arms spread, ricocheting high notes off the ceiling, surging with an energy you don’t find any place else in the world.

“If I can get someone to put down his fork when I’m singing,” Sherri will tell you, “I’m doing all right.”

Stephanie Robinson can make you put down your fork too, with a voice that rattles windows. She came to L.A. from Seattle looking for the end of the rainbow and even made a record once that went nowhere.

She’s still trying, still waiting, still dreaming the big dream, still watching the doorway to the night.

“Once it’s in your blood,” Emilio Bellissimo says, “it never leaves. You’re stuck with it forever.”

I left the place remembering my own thunderclaps and lights from heaven, and realizing Emilio was right. The dream, any kind of dream, never goes away. I like that.