Pal Joey
As we careen into the future and technology speeds our perception of time into a blur, our hearts often yearn for a place to slow down. A place of memory and recognition. A local joint with good food, smooth music and the decor to impress a first date.
Stevie Joe’s Lounge and Supper Club could be that place. Like a cruise down Sunset Boulevard at 2:30 a.m., Stevie Joe’s is an escape from the real L.A., the grit and concrete and that girlfriend in the Valley. Sure you’re lonely, pal, but it’s a good kinda lonely.
Owner Stephen Plache drew on his film-industry catering savvy to create a lavish club in a part of town not usually regarded as a destination. Hidden in a mini-mall on National Boulevard near the Santa Monica Freeway, Stevie Joe’s attracts happy-hour hipsters from Fox and Sony and swing-dancing diners from cozy Cheviot Hills and Culver City.
It’s a jarring shift from the scruffy surroundings to the over-the-top mix-and-match elegance of the interior. Plache combined design elements from at least four different decades to create a womb of a room. Small cafe tables occupy the main space. A tiny half-moon stage, accessorized with large palm fronds and velvet curtains, gives the room the air of an early-century salon. A medium-sized dance floor feels very ‘30s. Framed ‘50s-style paintings of pin-up girls hang behind the stage and retro / modern wavy studded seats oddly complement the long bar. The dark follows you around in this joint.
“My taste in music is pretty eclectic,” says Plache. “I like quirky bands. Secret agent bands.” Recent groups have included the Wallace Burke Trio, a Django-y acoustic jazz ensemble whose members look like early nuclear scientists, and the Lounge Poets. This month, Stevie Joe’s features “Evening in Brazil” night on Wednesdays with the group Ipanema.
The Red Room: Reddest of Red
The music never interferes with conversation, but patrons craving a different vibe can move to the reddest of red rooms--a darkly sexy Asian-style space that defies retina fatigue. This is the red Marnie sees in the Hitchcock film. Dragon Lady red. Blood red. Low couches invite intimate exchanges and couples seem to find the atmosphere persuasive.
The $12-$27 menu features American regional favorites such as Maryland crab cakes, New York steak, blackened turkey meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Executive chef Alle Thiam, formerly of Tribeca in Beverly Hills and Morton’s in West Hollywood, deftly updates menu classics without messing with our memories of these dishes.
The requisite martini list would have baffled the Rat Pack, though: Vodka is combined with every unlikely ingredient. Even Nick and Nora Charles, who would feel right at home at Stevie Joe’s, would both faint dead away when confronted with the Honeydew Me, a mix of Absolut vodka, Midori melon liqueur, triple sec and lime juice. A note to bartenders and restaurant owners: Stop. Stop right now with this incredible martini abuse.
The staff at Stevie Joe’s is amiable and avoids snobbery. General Manager Scott Lidtke, son of former Palace owner Dennis Lidtke, greets you as if you were walking in the door with Frank and Sammy. Patrons dress cocktail or casual--the club is so dark it hardly matters.
It takes either a madman or a visionary to open a club in an untested part of town. It can be done; Buffalo Club and 72 Market have flourished in shabby neighborhoods. The trick is to thoroughly remove patrons from the outside surroundings, and Stevie Joe’s tries that. You feel like you’ve stepped back in time, but many of the details are more whimsical than historically correct. Did clubs like this ever exist or is your memory playing tricks on you? Perhaps it’s lodged in your psyche along with episodes of “Twilight Zone,” “Perry Mason” and “Charlie Chan” serials.
The fantasy ends at the door, however, and 1999 slaps you in the face when you leave the club and realize that a valet guy has parked your car in the mini-mall parking lot that would have been free in other less-greedy years.
The nearby freeway overpass rumbles with cars. A traffic light blinks away the passage of time in the dingy gray night. Life got ya down, Bunky? Tired of the millennium frenzy? Stevie Joe’s is a choice escape from a city that has raised escapism to an art form.
BE THERE
Stevie Joe’s Lounge and Supper Club, 10433 National Blvd., West Los Angeles. Open Tuesday-Saturday at 5 p.m. Reservations recommended. (310) 837-5245.