Salon Wanderlust | Hollywood hangouts

This place has legs
By Catherine Seipp
In search of the perfect Hollywood hangout
Museum of unnatural history
By John McMurtrie
Myth and reality commingle at Culver City's Museum of Jurassic Technology
Mentally undressing autos in L.A.
By D. J. Waldie
Reflections on the odd relationship between walkers and drivers in L.A.
D E P A R T M E N T S
The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
Weiner take all!
Mondo Weirdo
The meanest rat in Malaysia
Road Warrior
Business travel & beyond
Table Talk
Where will you be on New Year's Eve, 1999? Will you travel or stay home?

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Your virtual travel agency

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LA S T+W E E K
Tuesday, Oct. 7, 1997

How Zurich invented the modern world
By Carlos Fuentes
A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

[In search of the perfect
Hollywood hangout]

hollywood hangouts
WHAT TRANSFORMS A SIMPLE RESTAURANT INTO A
HANGOUT FOR THE RICH AND FAMOUS? SALON'S
TINSELTOWN CORRESPONDENT DISHES UP THE INSIDE SCOOP.

BY CATHERINE SEIPP | one night I was at a dinner party at Spago when the man next to me suddenly asked, apropos of nothing, "Have you ever met Tony Curtis?"
"No," I said.
"Well, you're going to." I was pondering the Zen koan quality of this exchange when I looked up to see a tanned and ascotted Tony Curtis magisterially approaching our table. As he cocked an eyebrow in my direction, I could practically see the thought bubble forming over his head: "Who is this? Nobody!" Which of course only added to the experience.
Match me, Sidney -- I was having a Tony Curtis moment! I'd hoped for a Tony Curtis moment ever since reading something Bruce Jay Friedman wrote years ago about the fabulousness of life in Hollywood -- that Tony Curtis was the kind of person who, when he tells a story about a man dropping a veal chop on the floor, actually drops a veal chop on the floor. Oh, to be in the vicinity when that chop hits the ground!
Restaurants like Spago serve a kind of "Twilight Zone" function in Hollywood. They are, besides safe zones for celebrities, portals for commoners to a different dimension -- that of the rich and famous, or at least of the hip and happening. When this occurs often enough a restaurant becomes that ineffable thing known as a Hollywood hangout.
The atmosphere begins with the waiters, who are skilled at communicating that they are the social equals of the clientele without seeming overly familiar. Overhearing a heated discussion of "The Rules" at a Maple Drive lunch in Beverly Hills last year, for instance, the waitress had a couple of pithy comments to make about the book. When a customer at Orso on West Third Street joked, while fumbling for her Visa, "Will you take my Lucky's charge card?" the groovily spectacled waiter deadpanned, "I'd consider Ralph's."
The New York-based Indochine, which has been frequented by Sharon Stone, Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Roberts since it opened its Los Angeles branch on Beverly Boulevard last December, is especially careful about this. "We have a stable of interesting wait staff," says co-owner Jean-Marc Houmard, "people who are smart enough to have dinner with the people they are serving."

N E X T+P A G E+| Giving "the audience" what it wants
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PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY WILLIAM DUKE