Nothing beats time in the Bathrooms with friends

We’re trying to be a little more spontaneous, to try different medical shows, to experiment with alternate fruits. Plums seem to be our default fruit, and we’ve been watching “ER” for, like, forever. So every once in a while, my wife and I make a conscious effort to change things up.

“For dinner, let’s try that new place,” I tell her.

“What’s it called?’

“Los Banos,” I say.

“The Bathrooms?”

Once, restaurants were named for their chefs or owners: Dan Tana’s or the Barkley. I could always remember those.

Now L.A. restaurateurs disguise their joints with weird code words you would never use in real life: Gyu-Kaku or Jer-ne. Not to be a Philistine or anything, but how am I supposed to make reservations at a place I can’t even pronounce? More often than not, I take to jotting down restaurant names on my wrist, just to remember. I look as if I’ve been tagged by French street gangs.

So off we go to Los Banos, which isn’t its real name but I’ll forever think of it that way now, a cozy little place near a moving-van company in north Glendale. I like it the moment we walk in. The hostess has a big star tattoo on her arm and a smile like the Milky Way. “Good evening,” she says.

Turns out the Bathrooms has been open only a few weeks, so, unlike most L.A. restaurants, the employees treat us very nicely. When I ask them to turn up the air-conditioning a little, they do so right away.

“Are you hot?” my wife asks.

“Smokin’,” I say.

As I’ve noted before, passionate people like me are always a little sweaty. In this case, I raced home from work, raced to soccer practice, raced to help the boy install a battery in his car, raced to the restaurant for a 7:30 reservation, taking several illegal left turns along the way.

By the time we walked into the Bathrooms, I felt like I’d run a marathon.

“I just need something to drink,” I tell my wife.

“Hi,” says the waitress.

“You serve hard liquor?” I ask.

“Sorry,” she says.

“That’s OK,” I assure her, because I could tell she feels bad about it. She looks like a girl who could enjoy a little toot now and then.

“We’ll be fine with wine,” says my poet/wife.

Then our friends Phil and Bertha join us. I’ve given them phony names here, because our other friends, the few who remain, might be upset that we didn’t include them and I don’t want them to hold it against Phil and Bertha. Chances are they won’t care at all, but just in case.

“Isn’t this great?” asks Phil.

“So spontaneous,” notes Bertha.

“Welcome to Los Banos,” I say.

It’s a good meal, though it’s a little slow to start, since we haven’t seen Phil and Bertha in a while and have a lot of catching up to do about our daughters, who went to kindergarten together 10 years ago and are now starting to look at colleges.

“She didn’t like Georgetown,” Bertha says of a recent college tour.

“But she really liked William and Mary,” Phil says.

“They’re a nice couple,” I assure him.

“Who?” asks my wife.

“Bill and Mary,” I say.

We talk about money -- it’s like a fetish with us -- trust funds and how they can ruin you, and how corporations took care of our fathers but not us. We talk about how our kids have no sense of money while we order the $25 trout.

We gossip about who’s dating whom and say nice things about our remaining married friends. We drink Chardonnay out of a twist-off bottle ($30). We decide to sample the oysters ($16); they bring us five.

Five?

All in all, it’s an enjoyable evening at the Bathrooms, and Phil even picks up the tab, which I know missed the GNP of Canada by only a few bucks.

We walk to our cars without doggy bags, and if there’s one criticism I have of fine L.A. restaurants, it’s that you never leave with leftovers. It’s delicious, every morsel, but they barely give you enough to keep from passing out at the table, let alone enough to have the next day while watching a Red Sox game.

No wonder our actresses are so bony. Save the actresses!

Apparently, going out to dinner these days frequently doesn’t involve much food at all. It’s wine, fellowship and kitchen finesse. It’s pretty, pretty plates. Main courses crafted from crumbs.

On the way home, we stop at Burger King for a little bite. Now that’s spontaneous.

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.

For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.