Posts Tagged ‘Ma Maison’

Red Leather Booths

Friday, March 1st, 2013

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There was one prerequisite for our birthday dinner for Robin.  A red leather booth.  Where to find one?  So few places left with that old Rat Pack-era feel.  I still miss them.  One of my all-time favorites was Sneaky Pete’s.  On the Sunset Strip.  It was next door to Whisky A Go-Go, where Duke’s Coffee Shop was until recently.  Waitresses were dressed in really short-skirt barmaid outfits.   A place where Johnny Carson sometimes sat in on drums with the musicians.   How great was that?  Good that it’s been closed for a hundred years, or it might make me miss my father too much.  I went there with him all the time for steak and a baked potato with tons of butter, sour cream & chives.

Peggy had gone last week to Dan Tana’s, the dimly lit, checkered-tablecloth, celeb- oriented Italian in West Hollywood.  Libbie thought it was perfect for the Robin dinner.   Since I never went to Dan Tana’s much back in the day, it would be a nostalgia-free zone – no memories with my dad to weigh me down.  Still, I spent the rest of the week toying with the idea of changing restaurants.  Many texts and phone calls back and forth between the girls.  Robin said she would be just fine if we all met at Nate n’ Al’s, the Beverly Hills deli we all grew up in, but some of us just couldn’t envision a birthday celebration there.  So, I never cancelled the reservation — and here is how retro Dan Tana’s is: they never called “to confirm.” (more…)