Now Playing All Over Town: Power Breakfast, the Sequel

Paul Flaherty loved the Polo Lounge. Loved the pink phones, babe. Loved the food. For 20 years, surely as dawn found sunup, breakfast would find the Hollywood publicist schmoozing at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s world-famous trough-of-the-stars.

But that was yesterday, sweetheart, and the Beverly Hills Hotel has been undergoing renovations for more than a month. Word is it will not reopen for two years or longer, and neither will the Polo Lounge.

So whither, the power breakfast?

Some, such as Flaherty, have moved down the street to the Gardens at the Four Seasons Hotel. Others have defected to the Beverly Wilshire. Still others have been sighted at the Peninsula Hotel. Meanwhile, the younger set has scattered to delis and cafes across the Greater Westside in what one studio wag called “the grunging of Hollywood.”

“At one time, the perception was, if you want to make a deal, you got to go to the Polo Lounge,” said publicist Lee Solters. “It was convenient for people coming over the canyon from the Valley and to people in the immediate area--a halfway point.”

But over time, according to industry veterans, the Polo Lounge began to show its age. The roof leaked. The pink phones went on the fritz. By the time the face lift got under way, studio officials said, it had been years since they had booked, say, Oscar week rooms at the Beverly Hills unless someone--usually someone from Old Hollywood--requested them.

“The Beverly Hills Hotel crowd, well, that’s a past generation,” confided one studio official. “Forget about power--those people are happy if they can make it out to their own kitchen at breakfast time.”

These days, Solters said, “the power breakfast is being shared by a lot of entities.”

And the edgy murmur of breakfast deal-making is in itself a map to the homes of the stars.

“See, the Peninsula is getting big play because it’s right next to CAA and the Mike Ovitz camp,” Solters explained, referring to the powerful talent agency and its famous chief. “And the Beverly Wilshire is on the same block as the William Morris Agency. Some people even go to the Carnegie Deli in Beverly Hills.”

Flaherty, who used to have his own special table at the Polo Lounge--against the garden patio doors--now is entrenched in the nonsmoking room at the Four Seasons’ Garden restaurant, at a table for four by the patio window.

And he is not the only one who has set up camp at the Four Seasons. The hotel’s management says breakfast business has risen 20% since the Beverly Hills Hotel shut down.

On one recent morning, sightings included former Paramount exec Brandon Tartikoff, “Addams Family” producer Scott Rudin and Turner Entertainment President Scott Sassa. Earlier in the week, Andy Williams was there with his wife. Mel Gibson has been spotted there, as have Carol Burnett and Steve Martin. Even the elusive Julia Roberts showed up for breakfast recently.

When the Polo Lounge closed, “all the people who knew me asked for recommendations, and I recommended the Four Seasons,” said Flaherty, who likes the hotel’s location, widely spaced tables and Irish oatmeal.

Among other things, hotel officials say, the help is drilled on which celebrity likes which dish and who double-crossed whom last week (so they don’t seat enemies within food-fighting range).

But not everyone who is anyone is at the Four Seasons, as 75-year-old David Tebet will tell you.

For 17 years, Tebet, a former executive with NBC and Carson Productions, lived at the Beverly Hills Hotel--as in, that is where he slept, ate, voted and got his mail.

Now he favors a place where such notables as former 007 agent Roger Moore hang out, a place so riddled with power that he, well he can’t remember its name. All he knows is that it is in a mini-mall near Mulholland and Beverly Glen.

And if you’re too late for breakfast, “the place also has a damn fine Chinese restaurant.”