2 New Restaurants Will Blend Taste With Tradition

Two Los Angeles restaurants--one about to debut and the other in the planning stages--will mingle food and history at local landmarks.

On Monday the TRAXX restaurant will open in Union Station, with dining on the restored north patio and a bar serving drinks in the former telephone room.

Over in Hollywood, the owner of a hip coffee shop--the “last cappuccino before the 101” has bought the Country Church with plans to build a restaurant in a corner of the property and preserve the white clapboard church as a venue for musical or theater performances.

TRAXX, situated in a part of the station formerly occupied by a deli, is the first full-service restaurant to operate out of the landmark’s soaring spaces since the historic Fred Harvey eatery closed in the late 1960s.

The opening of the 120-seat establishment caps the first phase of station restoration by the Catellus Development Corp., which bought the Spanish Colonial-style building in 1989.

Patrons will dine on the likes of ahi tuna Napoleons and house-cured pork chops stuffed with prosciutto and figs while sitting under the 50-foot concourse arch or on the patio, restored according to the original landscaping design, Catellus said in a statement.

The station restoration, which calls for more landscaping and exterior refinishing, is taking place as the area emerges as a regional transportation hub serving thousands with Metrolink, the subway, buses and interstate trains.

Susan Moore has a more subdued setting in mind for her Hollywood restaurant. Moore, who with her husband, Michael, runs the Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop on Franklin Avenue, was attracted to the Country Church site by its air of shady refuge.

“Nobody knows it’s there,” said Moore, who discovered the densely landscaped church grounds on North Argyle Avenue when her car was in the shop and she walked by on the way to a bus stop. “I would look at it and think, what a great space for a restaurant. But I was just fantasizing.”

Then the church was put on the market earlier this year by the elderly sisters whose parents had founded it as a broadcast ministry in the 1930s. Last month Moore bought it for $1 million, with financing by the sisters. Now she is drawing up plans that she hopes will win her redevelopment help from the city. “I have a big road ahead of me,” she said. “I have no idea how I’m going to do it. I just have to have faith.”

Moore wants to build a bungalow-style restaurant on the southwest corner of the lot and then use the church for “grown-up entertainment:” musical performances or plays. If her plans come to fruition, she would then refinance the project. In the meantime, Moore intends to rent the church for weddings.

The 1934 building, designed to look like a Southern country church, was constructed largely by volunteers from the congregation of Pastor William Bennett Hogg. His Sunday radio broadcasts, carried nationally, opened with skits featuring characters from his Tennessee past.

After Hogg died in 1937, his widow, Virginia, carried on, and in the 1940s the Country Church became an important venue for country gospel. After Virginia’s death, daughters Martha and Milly kept the church going without the broadcasts.

Concerned about the church’s fate, local activists are breathing a sigh of relief over Moore’s plans to preserve the building, which was designated a city historic-cultural monument in 1992.