L.A. Restaurants

THE GREAT AMERICAN FOOD & BEVERAGE COMPANY — There were a couple of these around Los Angeles in the early seventies...one in Westwood, one in Santa Monica and maybe others. The two things I remember about them are that the portions were huge to the point of being impractical — you'd haul home about 80% of your entree and live off it for days — and that the servers would take turns performing with a small live band. Once, I ordered a hamburger and they brought me this footstool-sized mass of meat and bun surrounded by enough fries to stock a McDonald's for a month.

But I was sans ketchup, and when I turned to ask our waiter for some, I found him up on a platform, performing what turned out to be the world's longest version of "Rubberband Man." I think he did about ninety choruses while I failed to flag down any other employee and my burger cooled to tepid. Finally, long after I'd given up any chance of having the hamburger the way I liked it and had begun to eat it dry, the waiter noted the omission, hopped down from stage and fetched me a bottle of Heinz while still performing "Rubberband Man." It was one of those moments when you almost feel like you ought to tip.

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LINNY'S — You can't see it that well in this picture of Beverly Drive but the red building at left was Linny's Delicatessen, which served the best corned beef sandwich in town. The building went through several other tenants before turning into R.J.'s, one of the more popular places to eat ribs in Beverly Hills. The best corned beef in the vicinity is now two blocks to the north at Nate 'n' Al's Deli.

Also, at the far right of this photo, you can see Melody Lane, which was a popular coffee shop of the day. It was situated at the corner of Beverly Drive and Wilshire Boulevard. The white thing at the center of the picture is the dome of a movie theater with an Egyptian decor that showed, at least when I was going there, good ol' American movies. I saw Oliver! there and The Twelve Chairs, not on the same double bill. It was later converted into a jewelry store and was torn down completely in the middle of 2005.

WIL WRIGHT'S — Wil Wright's was a chain of ice cream parlors that dotted the Southern California landscape up until the mid-seventies. There was one in Beverly Hills at the corner of Beverly Drive and Charleville, and another in Westwood Village at the corner of Glendon and Lindbrook. (There were others but those were two I frequented.) They were the perfect place to take a date after the movie with delicate pink and red decor and little marble tables and wire-frame chairs that made you feel like you were seated inside a Valentine's Day card. I seem to recall that my dates would always order the banana split while I wondered about the Freudian implications of their orders. I would either have a milk shake or a dish of Wil Wright's unique orange sherbet which resembled frozen orange juice more than any orange sherbet I've ever had anywhere else. There is still a Wil Wright's brand of ice cream sold in stores but I think the parlors are all gone.

KELBO'S — There were two of these odd restaurant-bars founded by two men, Thomas Kelley and Jack Bouck, who combined the first syllables of their last names and came up with Kelbo's. One, on Fairfax across from CBS Television City, was torn down and there's an outlet of The Vitamin Shoppe at that address today. The building that housed the other was over on Pico at Exposition. It still stands but has been converted into a bikini bar called Fantasy Island. I haven't been inside the latter but I'll bet they kept some of the old Kelbo's decor, which was comprised of tiki gods, fish nets, lanterns in the shape of pineapples, and other things you could buy at any cheap patio furniture shop to suggest a real cheesy tropical motif.

The menu at Kelbo's was not all that Hawaiian: Burgers, barbecue meat sandwiches and some miscellaneous seafood. The concession to the islands was that every plate was garnished with a piece of pineapple and the fried shrimp was coated with coconut. They also served very sweet (but very good) barbecued ribs and had a menu of tropical drinks, some of which came flaming or served in a skull mug. About half of each restaurant was a large, dimly-lit bar that I suppose some found atmospheric. I never saw anyone there who looked like they might have been a hooker but given the mood, it wouldn't have surprised me.

One other thing that interested me about Kelbo's was that much of its advertising art (though not the matchbook above or the painting below) was done by a gent named Bob Hale who otherwise turned up on Los Angeles TV from time to time as a cartooning weatherman. (He was also active in Seattle where he owned a popular hobby shop that bore his name.) Hale's drawings of a fat Hawaiian guy in native garb could be seen on Kelbo's napkins and menus, and both of their buildings had huge murals on one side of Bob Hale cartoons. All of them also had his little signature character, Sammy the Seagull, who was always being drawn into his TV weathercasts, shivering or tanning himself depending on the forecast. It was said that Mr. Hale had once had a severe drinking problem and that he lectured and illustrated pamphlets for Alcoholics Anonymous or some such group. Which always made me wonder why he had done so much work promoting a place where a lot of people just went to drink.