Around 1970, food places began popping up around Southern California sporting the names of two great cowboy stars.  You had your Roy Rogers Roast Beef Sandwich places which through changes of ownership, evolved into the current chain that bears Roy’s moniker.  In their original form, they were more like Arby’s but much better.  Now, they aren’t.  You also had around L.A., five or six Lone Ranger restaurants, including one at Pico and Westwood and another over on Wilshire a few blocks west of Bundy.  I remember liking the name and the looks of the places and being very, very disappointed in the cuisine.  It was difficult to bite into one of their burgers and not get to wondering what had become of Silver.

But there was a reason to go the Lone Ranger restaurants and that was that on weekends, the Lone Ranger himself would appear at one or another of them.  And I don’t mean any old out-of-work actor in a mask.  This out-of-work actor was Clayton Moore, himself…and boy, did he still look good in the costume.  To this day, I’m kicking myself that for some reason, it never dawned on me to take a camera and get my picture with Kemosabe.

Moore would arrive in a very nice trailer/dressing room, accompanied by a very Caucasian lady in an Indian squaw costume.  She called herself “Tonta” and she was apparently an executive in the Lone Ranger business, which I think was then the Wrather Corporation.  Mr. Moore would shake hands and pose for pics and sign autographs, largely for folks who weren’t always aware that they were in the presence of the actual guy who’d played the role for years on TV.  If you said something to him that indicated you knew who he was (i.e., Clayton Moore, not the Lone Ranger), you’d see a glimmer of delight behind the mask and he’d talk to you in a whole different way, answering questions about his films and TV appearances.  He might even take you into the trailer for the kind of conversation he couldn’t have in front of the general public where he always had to be The Masked Man, as opposed to the actor.  And if you were really lucky, he’d give you a silver bullet.  He didn’t give those to just anybody.

Despite this, and for reasons obvious to anyone who actually ate at one, the Lone Ranger restaurants were a quick flop.  I think they all closed in less than a year. But it was worth enduring the burgers to shake hands with Clayton Moore and, yes, I still have my silver bullet.

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There were several Ontras around L.A. but we used to go to the one in Beverly Hills. It was on Beverly Drive at Dayton Way. Back in 1968 when comedian Pat Paulsen waged a mock presidential campaign, he held his big fund-raising dinner there and personally rang up the cash register, charging each diner 49 cents. That wasn’t that much below what you’d normally pay for a meal there.

At an Ontra, you could get a great hot turkey sandwich carved right off the bird, right in front of you. I usually did but sometimes I went for the fried chicken, especially on “all you could eat” night. As you went through the line, they gave you enough for a normal person, plus a little flag you could put on your plate to indicate you were entitled to more. They had a young lady dressed in gingham like a farm girl who strolled the cafeteria (a pretty large place) with a basket of more fried chicken and a pair of tongs. You could signal her to come over and give you another thigh or two…and it was pretty good fried chicken.

You could get great side dishes and an incredible selection of breads and other baked goods. They had all sorts of wonderful cakes, pies and other desserts but I usually went for the orange Jell-O, which was in cubes.

They don’t make cafeterias like that anymore. Hell, they don’t make cafeterias at all. The Ontras were all huge places with pretty good food at pretty good prices and I keep waiting for that kind of establishment to make a comeback. When they do, I’ll be first in line…with my tray.

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What?  Why does this list of defunct eateries include Junior’s, a deli located on Westwood Boulevard near Pico which is still operating, still one of the busiest dining establishments on the West Side?  [UPDATE: As explained here, the Junior’s on Westwood closed 12/31/12.]

Because we’re remembering the original Junior’s, which was located a few blocks away on Pico, in a building which is now Maria’s Italian Kitchen.  (It was a couple of different dining establishments between the time it was Junior’s and when it became Maria’s.  For a long time, it was an outlet of Damiano’s, aka Mr. Pizza, and it was very good.  So was the Damiano’s on Robertson, just south of Pico, which isn’t there any more.  The only remaining Damiano’s — for those who want their Italian food as much like “New York style” as possible out here — is over on Fairfax, across from Canter’s.)

The original Junior’s was a two-man operation, owned and run by Marvin Saul and his brother.  Marvin can still be seen often around the current Junior’s, wandering about and asking people if they’re enjoying their corned beef.  Once upon a time, he and his brother were cutting the corned beef.  And the lox and the salami.  It was the friendliest of delis because they seemed to remember every customer (by name, if possible) and they were always throwing in little freebees.  If you ordered and paid for a half-pound of roast beef, they tossed in an extra ounce or two.

On the counter was a little container of shtickels.  A shtickel is like a miniature salami…big enough for two or three bites.  They cost ten cents apiece in the mid-sixties and a hand-lettered sign on the bin said, “It used to be a nickel a shtickel…now it’s a dime, ain’t it a crime?”  Whenever I went into Junior’s with my mother, one of the Saul brothers would treat me to a free shtickel.

Most of their business was Take Out but there were a couple of tables there and if you ordered a sandwich, one of the Sauls would make it, bring it to you at a table and make sure you had silverware, water, etc.  The food was very good and they did a good business, so I guess it didn’t surprise anyone when they bought the larger building on Westwood, moved over there and began expanding.  Eventually, they bought out their neighbors, knocked out walls and had a huge delicatessen with a large staff and a superb on-premises bakery.

The food there is generally pretty good but I miss the personal service and friendliness of the old place.  And I really miss the shtickels.

There were two Nickodells at one time.  The less-famous one, which closed before the other, was at Argyle and Selma in Hollywood.  No one noticed when that one went away…but everyone in town lamented the closure of the one at 5511 Melrose Avenue, built into the side of a movie studio.  The studio was at one time RKO Studios…then it became Desilu…then it assumed its present identity as Paramount.  Whatever the studio was called, Nickodell was the place folks working on the lot escaped to for a mid-day cocktail, and many important deals were made at its tables.  When I Love Lucy was casting and they needed someone to play Fred Mertz, Desi Arnaz got a call from an actor named William Frawley and they arranged to get together and discuss the role over drinks…at Nickodell Melrose.

Also right down the street was a studio with a lot of history.  The building at 5515 Melrose started life as the Consolidated Film Studio and later became the West Coast home of NBC Radio.  It went through a dozen tenants after that before becoming the home of KHJ channel nine, a local TV station which now broadcasts (from elsewhere) as KCAL.  It was said that in the fifties and sixties, the KHJ News Crew practically lived at the bar at Nickodell and wrote their copy on its napkins.

I only ate there twice, maybe three times.  The food was pretty straightforward American — steaks, chops, chicken — and you got the feeling that for most diners there, the cuisine was of secondary importance to the libations.  But the meals were served efficiently by real, professional waiters (no aspiring actors allowed) and the whole place had a cramped, wonderful sense of Old Hollywood history.

Nickodell’s closed with some fanfare in November of 1993.  News crews showed up the last week, as did everyone who’d ever eaten there and wanted a last meal and a souvenir ash tray.  But then it suffered the ignominious fate of completely disappearing.  Paramount just moved some fences around and suddenly, not only was Nickodell not there but you couldn’t even see where the building had been.  When I drive by now, I think I know where it used to be…but I’m not sure.

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On La Cienega, roughly across the street from where Lawry’s is now situated, Ollie Hammond’s was a great place to get a real meal at any hour of the day…at least until the place burned down. When Kate Mantilini’s over at Wilshire and Doheny opened up, it originally announced that it would emulate Ollie Hammond’s with a similar menu and 24 hour service. Then it didn’t do either and I’m still feeling the disappointment.

I really liked Ollie Hammond’s. Its prime rib was great…and I always thought it took guts to have prime rib on your menu when you’re that close to Lawry’s. The soup du jour seemed to always be a tasty tomato concoction with ground beef and pasta noodles that people informally but not inaccurately called “spaghetti soup.” On Sundays, they served a corned beef hash that still has folks salivating.

Usually if you go into a restaurant at 3 AM, your choices are slim. The guy in the kitchen knows how to make sandwiches, eggs, hamburgers and not much else. If there is anything else, he’s probably reheating something cooked by the day or evening chef. This was not the case at Ollie Hammond’s. No matter what the hour, you had a wide range of freshly-prepared options, sometimes even including a baked potato. Try getting a baked potato at any other restaurant in the middle of the night.

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The other thing I remember about Ollie Hammond’s is that they had a waiter who was a dead ringer for actor Bill Bixby. This was not just my opinion. Everyone mentioned it and he once told my date and me that some patrons refused to believe he was not that guy researching a role or picking up a few bucks between series or something of the sort. He said that Bill Bixby had come by a few times and gotten very spooked by the resemblance. I always wondered if anyone who wrote on any of the many shows in which Mr. Bixby starred ever thought to whip up an “evil twin” episode or something of the sort and to hire this waiter to play whichever role Bixby wasn’t playing at the moment.

Below are some unassembled matchbook covers, one from when Ollie Hammond’s had three locations in town. Until someone sent me this one, I only knew about the one on La Cienega. The one on Wilshire would have been near the Ambassador Hotel. The one at Third and Fairfax would have been very convenient to me and I might be there right now having a steak or that great hash.

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This restaurant, situated in the corner of a shopping mall on Jefferson Boulevard in Culver City — was unrelated to the chain of Ponderosa Steak Houses that now dot the nation.  This one was a huge “all you can eat” emporium that my friends and I loved in the seventies and eighties.  It was set up cafeteria-style with a large salad bar and then a carving station where several chefs would dispense about six different entrees including prime rib, baked ham, roast turkey and corned beef, and as many side dishes.  The food was pretty decent but of course, the best part was that you could go back for more and more and more, and you could try everything.

What fascinated me about the place was that while the outside advertising emphasized how you could stuff yourself on meat for a modest price, once you were inside, all efforts were devoted to getting you to eat the cheap foods.  Servers would place baskets of very fine, thick-sliced sourdough bread on your table and tell you how yummy it was.  They were also apparently instructed to never take away a dirty plate until you’d eaten every possible scrap of edible material on it.  If you tried to get them to remove a plate with one more bite on it, they’d look at you like you couldn’t possibly be serious and ask, “But…aren’t you going to eat that?”

In the meantime, you had to pass the salad bar to get to where they carved the prime rib and if you hadn’t already put a lot of lettuce on your plate, the carvers would look at you in astonishment and mutter, “No salad?”  Like they were very concerned you get a balanced diet.  As you went back for your third or fourth helping, the slices would get thinner and they’d hurriedly toss a huge scoop of rice or mashed potatoes on your plate even before you asked for a side dish.

Once, I talked to the manager about booking a banquet there for C.A.P.S., the cartoonist group of which I was then president.  He told me they loved private parties and explained to me that private parties were not on an “all you can eat” basis.  The way it worked, when our group was ready to dine, they’d close off the serving line to everyone but us.  We could then go through and each of us could have our pick on any of their entrees, which would be carved for us in portions larger than the usual serving size for the Ponderosa.

After I left, I realized two things.  One was that our members would complain about the cost per plate, which was higher than the “all you can eat” price to eat the same food if you were dining in the next room.  Also, I realized that we’d become part of the restaurant’s efforts to get their patrons to not go back for more food.  It would take our group at least twenty minutes to go through that serving line, during which all the other folks dining in the restaurant wouldn’t be able to get seconds or thirds or ninths.  I think that was the main reason they liked private parties.

The Ship's on Overland Ave. in Culver City

Christopher Columbus had three ships and restaurateur Emmett Shipman had three Ships — one in Westwood, one in Culver City and everyone’s favorite, which was the one at Olympic and La Cienega.  Each Ships was open 24 hours and it wasn’t Denny’s. In terms of cuisine, it wasn’t that much better but it felt friendlier and classier.

If you ordered breakfast, they brought you bread instead of toast and you cooked it yourself in the toaster at your table. Every table had one, plus they were all along the counter for the folks sitting there. It was another great place to get a hot turkey sandwich and I remember that a friend of mine liked to go there because they had “the coldest milk in the world.”  The waitresses were all what you’d get if you put out a casting call for “friendly coffee shop waitresses.”

All three Ships Coffee shops were opened by Shipman between 1956 and 1967 and closed within a narrow window in the eighties.  They were noted for their decor and the one at Olympic and La Cienega was used as a location in several movies.  They may be among the “most missed” defunct eateries in all of Southern California. Here’s a look at their classic menu…

To see the entire Ships menu, click above

Down on Fairfax, south of Olympic, there’s an area now known as Little Ethiopia because it contains around a half-dozen Ethiopian restaurants and one or two retail stores with Ethiopian groceries or gifts.  Back in the eighties and before, most of the buildings housed delicatessens and the largest was The Bagel, a very genial place with very mediocre deli food and not much of it.

People went to The Bagel for the waitresses, who were the friendliest in town.  Every time I went there, the place was full of older men who, I got the impression, went there every day to flirt with them.  (They were mostly older women — older than me, not older than the older men.)

There were two parts to the menu at The Bagel: Hot food and sandwiches.  Except at breakfast, they always seemed to be out of whatever hot food you tried to order.  I’d try to order the roast chicken and the waitress would say they were out.  So I’d try to order the pot roast and the waitress would say they were out.  So I’d try to order the brisket platter and guess what.  Finally one time, I just turned to her and said, “Let’s do this the easy way.  Tell me what you do have.”  She answered, “The chicken soup and any of the sandwiches except the turkey pastrami, and we’re out of sourdough and egg bread.”  Then she leaned over near me and said, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear, “The owner only orders the things people are buying.  No one’s ordered turkey pastrami lately so the kitchen doesn’t stock it.”

“Well, let me think about what I want then,” I said.  “In the meantime, I’d like a bowl of chicken soup and a bagel.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention.  We’re out of bagels.”

I acted more shocked than I probably was.  “Out of bagels?  Isn’t this place called The Bagel?  How can you run out of bagels at The Bagel?”

“We didn’t run out,” she explained.  “It’s another thing the boss no longer orders.”

Are we surprised The Bagel went out of business?  I’m not…but I still kinda miss the place, anyway.

The building on Wilshire that once housed Andre’s of Beverly Hills got a new tenant ten or twelve years ago — a great place to eat steak called the Porterhouse Bistro. They had other tempting things on their menu besides Porterhouse Bistro and I suppose they were quite good but somehow, I never got around to sampling them in all my visits. Usually, I’d take one or more friends and then one of them and I would share the steak for two on the prix fixe menu.

There are a number of upscale steakhouses in Beverly Hills, all serving quality meat. With some though, the pricing and atmosphere make you feel they expect all diners to either be very wealthy or (more likely) on someone’s expense account. F’rinstance, the beef at Mastro’s is quite fine but I find the dining room cramped and loud, the service aggressively-attentive and the check a bit high for what you get. It isn’t so much the money as that feeling that someone played you for a bit of a sucker. I might not feel that way if the mood was conducive to sitting around and chatting with your companions after the meal but the room doesn’t lend itself to that.  It’s kind of an “eat and get out” place.

Porterhouse Bistro closed about a year ago…a great loss as it was the perfect place for steak. It was rarely crowded, which I suppose is the main reason it’s on this site now. They lowered prices by not having eleven busboys hovering to scrape the crumbs off your table. The room was quiet. About all you could hear from the next table was the sound of someone really, really enjoying their steak.

Their prix fixe menu gave you the following. There was a baguette from the La Brea Bakery accompanied by a house tapenade, tomato bruschetta, a whole roasted garlic flower and butter. Then for the next course, you could choose from an array of salads and soups. I usually went for a large onion soup that always arrived at the table at volcanic temperature. It came in a bowl with a puff pastry baked onto the top and you’d use your spoon to poke a hole in it and let massive quantities of steam escape.  It was pretty good soup.

Next came the entree.  You could have a T-Bone, a Rib Eye, a Filet Mignon, a Flat Iron, a Rack of Lamb, Whitefish, chicken a couple different ways or one of several other possibilities.  I always participated in the 24 ounce Porterhouse Steak for two which came sizzling hot on its plate and pre-carved into smaller chunks to transfer to your dish for further carving. It was as good as any steak I’ve ever had anywhere. The side dishes were small in size but pretty good, especially the fries. If you were sharing with someone else, each of you got to pick one. Dessert followed and your choices included a great chocolate lava cake or apple tart…oh, and with your meal, you got two beverages and could pick from the house wine, a list of cocktails, soft drinks, coffee, tea or milk.

Price for all this? $44.00 a person, more on holidays. If you figure what this would run you elsewhere in Beverly Hills, it was a steal.  Last time I was at Mastro’s, the 24 ounce Porterhouse was $39.95 a la carte and a like number of not-quite-as-good fries were $7.50.

A gent named Bobby Burton ran the place and I’m sorry he couldn’t keep the doors open. I think its location — away from the main action of the city — is what did it in. Since it went away, I have shifted my steak allegiance to Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Canon Drive, where the cuisine is a near-clone of the great Peter Luger’s in Brooklyn but with a plusher atmosphere and a wider menu. I hope it will never join the other restaurants on this site.

Andre’s of Beverly Hills was a chic and popular (but perhaps a bit overpriced) restaurant located on Wilshire Boulevard. It was for a time successful enough that it led to a smaller, cheaper version — an Italian cafeteria in the Town and Country mall across from Farmers Market. My family and I went several times to the Wilshire Andre’s but I was more impressed with the little one.

I have two theories as to what closed the big Andre’s. One was its location, situated far from any other place you might want to go and with not-great parking. Since that Andre’s closed, several other restaurants (including the Porterhouse Bistro, discussed elsewhere on this site) have opened in that building and not lasted long.

The other factor I think was the proximity of the cafeteria version about two miles away — and as of this writing, still there at the corner of Fairfax and 3rd Street. The latter does a fabulous business selling very good pasta and pizza at rock bottom prices. If you want a cheap meal in not-plush surroundings, hurry thine backside over to the Town and Country mall across from Farmers Market. Andre’s is located in a little courtyard a few doors to the left of the Whole Foods Market. It’s one of those places where there’s almost always a line.

That Andre’s was popular back when the Andre’s on Wilshire was up and operating, and local restaurant critics couldn’t resist comparing them. Every year or so, some writer in the L.A. Times felt compelled to ask you’d go to the Wilshire location and pay four times as much for the same food? That kind of buzz must have harmed the one on Wilshire to some extent. (There was also an Andre’s in Westchester for a time.)

The only real memory I have of the Beverly Hills Andre’s was one time my family was there, dining with some wealthy friends who were paying. We were waiting for the valet to bring us our car for a fee roughly equal to the cost of a complete lasagna dinner at the other Andre’s. Suddenly, about six limousines converged on the place, and official-looking men jumped out and began clearing the way for the passenger from one. It was Robert Kennedy. I waved to him and he waved back, and I regretted that I didn’t have the opportunity to warn him that he was going to the wrong Andre’s.

Andre’s declined in popularity throughout the eighties. Around 1995, it was sold to new owners who rebranded it as Andre’s La Trattoria di Beverly Hills. A few years later, it was something else and then something else and so on. The cafeteria is at the moment still open across from Farmers Market and serving great, inexpensive cuisine. Expansion plans for the mall it’s in have been announced and if and when they happen, that Andre’s will go away, at least for a while and maybe forever. The plans though have been postponed and maybe they’ll be postponed again. We will update this page as the situation evolves.