A paean to Tana’s on it’s 51st:
The yellow-hued shack laced with green stripes, cradled on the border between the eastern edge of Beverly Hills and the beginning of West Hollywood, with a ultra-bright fluorescent neon sign heralding DAN TANA’S, FINE ITALIAN CUISINE is now just barely on the cusp of being in operation for over fifty years. No small feat in a town where the majority of restaurants continue to decease in their infancy.
A ramshackle though almost transcendently old-fashioned club house where Hollywood movers and shakers have been devouring gargantuan cuts of well-marbled, prime cuts of beef washed down with a sizeable coterie of martinis, or phalanx of textbook-perfect Manhattans (depending on one’s poison of choice). A place where tourists are even welcomed with open arms, essentially returning as strident regulars on subsequent visits.
Dan Tana’s has continually kept late dinner hours over the years serving full meals past the stroke of midnight, which is a downright rarity even in supposedly metropolitan Los Angeles, an uncharacteristically early to bed town. Night owls can devour a huge portion of calamari fritti followed by a vitello parmigiana (heavy on the mozzarella cheese) and finish with a slab of tiramisu hours after the majority of dinner houses have closed up shoppe for the night. Yet, most of the food is usually pedestrian to picky gourmet eaters (though I like it just fine). The “fine Italian cuisine” seemingly grows on you.
And the drinks. The mustachioed, septugenerarian bartender, Mike, never skips a beat when doling out those drinks. He’s efficient, continually prolific with an off-colour joke, and yet keeps his cool even when the bar area is three-deep beyond three-deep. Though he may have cut back on his previous work schedule in the ensuring decades (he’s been stationed behind the bar almost as long as Tana’s existence).
He makes drinks the classic way. Nothing fancy. No luxardo cherries here; no mixology-style ice cubes; no artisanal simple syrups to fenestrate an old-fashioned. Stiff drinks are the point of reference and sometimes a concession, grudgingly, is made to modernity with a treacly sour apple martini (but, you specifically asked for it). Mike may take a shot or two with you if he happens to feel like it, which is not so infrequent. And he knows his regulars like family, even ones who haven’t visited in years and are finally returning again after an extensive sabbatical, regulars he lovingly jokes around with to no end.
A plethora of birthday parties are celebrated nightly with the long-time wait staff, professionally attired in the classic manner, catering to their needs. Large, raucous groups drink and eat late into the night. It’s a happy place.
At the bar, regulars discuss and debate the issues of the day, or sling dirty jokes like they’re going out of style, and drink, drink, and drink yet some more. (Hundreds upon hundreds of drinks are served each and every evening) Some stalwart, die-hard regulars even visit virtually every night of the week. And why would they not ?
The restaurants seems to stand apart from L.A. proper where patrons open the door to the darkly lit room, squinting their eyes to adjust to the absence of light, and in general evade the ubiquitous malaise of the urban maelstrom, if just for a few mere though incredibly entertaining hours.