L.A. Restaurants

McGOO'S — There were at least three McGoo's Restaurants — one in Pasadena serving the Cal Tech crowd, one in Westwood Village serving the U.C.L.A. crowd, one on Hollywood Boulevard serving transients and derelicts, some of whom had once been in the Cal Tech and U.C.L.A. crowds. All seemed dedicated to the proposition that pizza is best enjoyed when the music is so loud it makes the pepperoni curl. These were "party" places that I gathered had once been exclusively in Gay 90's decor but by the time I visited the two I visited (Westwood and Hollywood), someone had given up and haphazardly slapped modern posters and decorations on top of the classic ambience. My memories of the few times I could stand to be in them is that they had sports on the TV, silent movies running on a screen and a music system cranked up way beyond Spinal Tap's infamous 11. As if that and the mediocre pizza didn't send you babbling into the streets, employees wearing straw hats would occasionally leap up onto the tables and lead everyone in singing a song other than the one currently coming through the speakers. Some claimed that if you listened hard, you could hear the sound of one McGoo's at both of the other McGoo's. They've all been defunct for several decades and I'm not sure I still don't catch the occasional echo.

VILLA CAPRI — In 1939, the legendary restaurateur Pasquale "Patsy" D'Amore came to L.A. from New York and with his brother Franklyn, opened Casa D'Amore on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. There, they served the first pizza in Los Angeles to the likes of Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Dorsey and Dick Powell.

In 1949, he opened Patsy D'Amore's Pizza in the famous Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax. The place was such a success that a year later, he opened the Villa Capri on McCadden Street in Hollywood. In 1957, it relocated to a larger, plusher building a few blocks away at 6735 Yucca, one block north of Hollywood Boulevard. The new Villa Capri became a favorite of movie stars, including James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Durante. Durante was there so often that a private banquet room was named for him.

But the big star of the Villa Capri was Sinatra. That was, if you don't count Patsy, who was much loved by the cliente. But with the Capitol Records building only a few blocks away, Frank practically used the restaurant as his clubhouse, dining there often and throwing lavish parties. When he recorded the song, "The Isle of Capri," he snuck a mention of the Villa Capri into its lyrics. It is said that in 1960, when Sinatra threw his support behind John F. Kennedy for president, he held planning sessions there to figure out how to mobilize show business to help J.F.K.

D'Amore passed away in 1975, by which time the area around the Villa Capri had deteriorated. By then, for reasons unknown, Sinatra had shifted his main patronage to Matteo's in Westwood. Joe Barbera (of Hanna-Barbera) used to lunch there almost every day, often taking Yours Truly. In 1982, shortly after it was used as a location for the movie Body Heat, the building was turned into a radio station and later an office complex before it was bulldozed in 2005. Still, the cuisine of the late Patsy D'Amore lives on. His family still owns and manages the Patsy's Pizza stand in Farmers Market. A photo behind the counter proudly shows Patsy on the set of the movie Guys and Dolls, chatting with Sinatra.

PIZZA PRINCE — The best pizza I ever had in my life was at an unassuming little stand on La Cienega Boulevard, about five blocks south of Pico. In the late sixties/early seventies, Pizza Prince served an incredible pie. I worked for a while in that area and lunched on Pizza Prince pizza at least twice a week. And then I introduced the girl I was dating to their cuisine and suddenly, she didn't want to eat anywhere else...which was jes' fine with me. My friends and I were all heartbroken one day around 1973 when the building suddenly turned into something else run by someone else. (It went through a couple of identities and is now a taco stand.)

Then one day a few years later, I was leaving an appointment out in Burbank and turned onto an unfamiliar street only to find a familiar logo — Pizza Prince! Same lettering style and everything. What's more, when I went inside the same guy who'd run the La Cienega stand was there kneading dough and he even recognized me. As he heated me some slices, he explained his old landlord had doubled the rent so he relocated, even taking along the same oven and most of the same kitchen gear. Sure enough...same wonderful pizza. I made a mental note to return there often and two weeks later, dragged a bunch of friends towards its doors, promising them pizza so fine it would spoil them for life. You probably see this coming but I didn't: The place was closed. Out of business, apparently. As far as I know, it never reopened.

C.C. BROWN'S — I'm always suspicious of restaurants that claim to have invented some item that you now find on menus everywhere. In Philadelphia, there are at least three places that will swear to you the Philly steak sandwich was first served on their premises, and there are two in L.A. alone (Phillipe's and Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet) that insist they originated the French Dip.

Legend has it that the hot fudge sundae was the creation of one Clarence Clifton Brown, serving patrons a dish of ice cream with a little apply-it-yourself flask of molten chocolate. This supposedly occurred in his parlor in downtown L.A. in 1906. In 1929, his son Cliff moved the business to 7007 Hollywood Boulevard, just down the street from Grauman's Chinese Theater. There it stood for decades, serving sundaes to celebrities and to tourists who came by to watch the celebrities eat sundaes. Its lush interior — mahogany booths with pink leather seats — was seen in several movies including Minnie and Moscowitz.

I went there the first time as a kid in the mid-sixties and the sundae was delicious but a bit of a disappointment. From all I'd heard about it in advance, I was expecting something that would put your basic Baskin-Robbins sundae to shame...and the one at C.C. Brown's was only marginally better. Which is not to say it was anything but delicious. I just imagined the world's greatest hot fudge sundae, as I'd long heard it was, would do something more than just taste good.

The establishment on Hollywood Boulevard finally closed in 1996, its final days marked by a stampede of patrons who acted like they might never taste a decent hot fudge sundae again. The company seems to still exist, franchising the name and selling fudge and yogurt and (I think) ice cream, as well. In many a restaurant, you can still find the assertion that they're serving a C.C. Brown hot fudge sundae indistinguishable from the original...but I'll bet most of those places microwave the fudge.

WOODY'S SMORGASBURGER — The last outpost of Woody's Smorgasburger, which was down on Sepulveda just South of LAX, has just been turned into an International House of Pancakes. Lo, how the mighty have fallen. In the sixties, there were a number of Woody's around Southern California, including a wonderful one in Westwood Village, a block or three from U.C.L.A., and one near U.S.C., which is seen in the photo above. I could often be found in the U.C.L.A. one between (and once in a while, even during) classes. Woody's was the first chain I know of where you could get a hamburger and then carry it over to a little self-service counter stocked with ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce, etc., and do whatever you wanted to it. Today, there are chains aplenty like Fuddrucker's that offer this but at the time, it was something rather special.

Woody's burgers were pretty darn good too, with a nice barbecue flavor...and every Woody's also had a "make your own sundae" bar: You could get an empty dish at the counter, fill it full of soft-serve vanilla ice cream, then slather it in a diverse selection of syrups and sprinkles and crushed nuts and such. My old comic club buddies and I would practically have a contest to see how much sundae we could get in one dish, building structurally-unsafe vertical arrays, then trying to walk them back to the table and devour the top stories before it all collapsed.

One of the guys once asked if he was allowed to put the toppings from the sundae bar on his burger or vice-versa. When they told him yes, he began speculating on what hot fudge or whipped cream would do to a hamburger, and whether the maraschino cherries would blend with the mustard or if he should leave the mustard off. Each visit to Woody's, he'd say, "Next time, I'm going to try it," but he never worked up the courage. Or wanted to spoil a good smorgasburger.

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