RESTAURANT REVIEW : Millie’s Rises From Ashes Once Again

One night, a friend who was supposed to meet me at Millie’s in Silver Lake didn’t show. Luckily, Millie’s is the kind of place where you can be alone and not feel overly self-conscious. No maitre d’ will seat you behind the potted palms. In fact, I wasn’t the only lone wolf at the counter--there was a guy playing all the Hank Williams on the jukebox, a woman writing a term paper. The kitchen sits behind the counter: I watched my chicken pan-fry.

Paul Greenstein, now on his second round as Millie’s owner, has about zero kitchen anxiety. He cooks as easily as he talks, tending the grill, whipping egg whites for chile rellenos by hand. I’d just cut into my chicken when my friend finally arrived--she’d been sitting over at Gloria’s across the street. “How many restaurants with women’s names are there in Silver Lake?” she asked grouchily.

I shared my chicken with her, a true act of friendship--it was well-seasoned, wonderfully brown and crisp, juicy within. Next, we ate her pork chops in their thick, delicious grainy mustard sauce. Bowls of spicy, curried fresh vegetables came with our meals, along with dry mashed potatoes and tomatoey Spanish rice.

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Millie’s is art-directed to look like a lunch counter that’s been open 70 years: There are cunning vintage light fixtures and a big old wall clock; the menus are on Coca-Cola blackboards from the ‘60s. In fact, the lunch counter, in various incarnations, has fed the neighborhood affordable breakfasts, lunches and dinners for almost 70 years.

Greenstein, voluble historian and self-made fry cook, says the original eight-stool 1920s lunch counter was called the Devil’s Mess. In the ‘30s, it became the Nook. In 1967, Millie and Jack’s. Greenstein was Millie and Jack’s customer and eventually bought the place with a partner. After two years of partnership woes, Greenstein left to write a history book. He’ll show you a copy as he chicken-fries your steak.

By the time I first went to Millie’s, the restaurant was back in the hands of his old partner and had just been enlarged to include a new dining room.

The food was good then--I recall particularly nice lamb chops--and the waitresses wore pajamas. Despite these virtues, Millie’s soon changed hands again. The new owner stayed five years, growing famous for her tangles with the IRS. When Millie’s came up for auction last May, Greenstein came to watch . . . and wound up back in the kitchen with a new partner doing the same thing he did nearly 10 years ago: flipping eggs, frying meat, shoveling great mounds of potatoes.

It’s good food again. On subsequent visits, I especially liked a freshly made chile relleno and juicy cactus salad, although the refried beans were dry. The chicken fried steak is a classic.

There’s peach cobbler with a sweet biscuit-like crust and an incredible, rich, plain cheesecake cut in slabs the size of Mt. Baldy.

At breakfast, we take a wobbly seat in the bright tiny dining room. The woman at the next table has a vast, complicated tattoo spanning her bared shoulders. Her friend has gold pierced through his cheek, nose, ear, lip and eyebrow.

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At the stove, Greenstein’s partner, Patty Peck, is sending out stacks of pancakes, thick French toast and various egg specialties: a scramble of avocado, eggs and salsa called the Devil’s Mess and a satisfying hangtown fry. Biscuits, light and fluffy, are shaped like muffins. Orange and grapefruit juice is squeezed to order. Too bad our potatoes are dried out and old. The coffee is fresh-ground, remarkably strong. It’s a mark of distinction that this obdurately hip hole-in-the-wall boasts no espresso machine.

Every visit yields more quirks: No dinner salads tonight. No soup of the day. Dried out beans and potatoes. No more mashed potatoes. Out of cheesecake--there’ll be more in a couple days. Given the scale and ambition and prices at Millie’s, who can argue? Besides, it’s warm, there’s human chatter, Hank Williams and Love sing on 45s so worn, they sound buried, cottony. And no matter what you’re finally allowed to order, you’ll get enough to eat.

* Millie’s, 3524 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 664-0404. Breakfast, lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. No alcohol. Cash only. Dinner for two, food only, $13-$20.