Firefly Brightens Up the Valley Scene

They couldn’t give Smokin’ Johnnie’s away. The Studio City venue, with the motto “Booze, Blues and Barbecues,” never quite took off, and last year its owners courted dozens of Hollywood clubbers to take over the venue on Ventura Boulevard. Nobody would touch it. Studio City, you may recall, is located in the Valley, where Hollywood club impresarios fear to tread.

That was before Jeffrey Best got his hands on the restaurant. The owner of Best Events--a party planning company that throws high-profile Hollywood events--Best transformed the scrappy blues club into Firefly, a dreamboat bar and restaurant.

In a mere four weeks and exclusively by word of mouth, Firefly has become a meeting place of choice for Hollywood scenesters and their brethren--hipsters who live in Silver Lake, Los Feliz and even the Westside.

Clubland folks have been trying to colonize the Valley for years with little success. But Best seems to have the genes to make tough situations work. His father and uncles ran nightclubs in the ‘40s and ‘50s, when it was a bit like the Wild West. Best said that if gangster Mickey Cohen walked into your club and told you he was a partner--like he did at the Slapsy Maxie, which Best’s father and uncles ran--suddenly you were in business with the mob.

Best’s finishing school was on Fairfax Avenue in the 1990s at a hipster eatery called Olive. He worked as general manager and maitre d’ at the now-closed restaurant. He’s had success as a partner of such venues as Daddy’s, Vine, Dominick’s, Red and Habana in Orange County, and built a successful catering business. But conquering the Valley, that’s an entirely different battle. “Everyone told me I was crazy to do business here,” Best says of his new Studio City venture. “But I kept thinking, we’re two miles from the center of the world. How far off could I be?”

Turns out, he was right on the money.

Firefly is veiled by overflowing ivy, just a few blocks east of Laurel Canyon Boulevard; the only giveaway is a brisk valet parking business. The entrance looks like the study of a rich client in a 1940s detective movie; visualize Bogie in “The Big Sleep.” The bar by the entrance is fiery red, and is flavored by more than a dash of ‘40s noir. It’s sexy and simple, and people recline on comfy cushions surrounded by three walls of loaded bookshelves. The room is so dark, Angelenos aren’t likely to become more literate here, but at least they’ve got options. Firefly’s best feature, a fire pit in the middle of the restaurant area, makes the whole indoors super-cozy.

But Firefly has an interesting duality. Its red, inferno-like entrance gives way to a white-hot patio with cabana-like tables enclosed by drapes. Guests can draw the curtains and smooch, but most people prefer to take a look around.

Each time I’ve been there, the music’s slammin’, with deejays offering sublime mixes of soul and ambient sounds. The coed bathrooms add a bit of titillation; you really never know who you might be washing your hands next to.

For Best, who was born in Hollywood but grew up in Encino, Firefly’s a homecoming of sorts. But it was his experience at Olive in the early ‘90s that shaped his vision, and he even pays homage to it with a signature appetizer: fried olives.

“You’d have multimillionaire producers sharing a beer with a penniless writer, and everyone was happy to know each other,” he says. “It gave L.A. a neighborhood feel, and that’s what we’re trying to capture here.”

Firefly, 11720 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. 21 and older. No cover. (818) 762-1833.