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It Starts When you Walk Through the Door...
You immediately realize that this is different, special, and without yet knowing why, you get the feeling this is going to be a night to remember. Then you look around Dan Tana's and you understand. This is not the hot new fusion cooking restaurant du jour everyone is talking about, the one that will close down within a year and never be mentioned again. No, this is a timeless restaurant, a perfect combination of Old Hollywood and new Hollywood...a seven-night-a-week social scene full of stories and secrets.
Built in 1929, and sandwiched between Beverly Hills and the residential Norma Triangle, the location was not a traditional restaurant location in any sense of the word, as it was basically a bungalow housing fast food joint with names that changed over the years but whose fare stayed the same: Black Lucky Spot Café, Domenico's Lucky Spot, Dominik's Hamburger Stand. The primary clientele for this diner location were streetcar maintenance workers, on break from the Santa Monica line.
But by 1964, change was coming to Los Angeles. Freeways were replacing street cars, the backlot of 20th Century Fox had been sold, and inits place Century City was rising, smog was everywhere, and every year hundreds of thousands of people were moving to LA. Still, the little house on Santa Monica Boulevard looked out over empty lots and vast undeveloped space, forever stuck in time—or so it seemed.
Dan brought the location for $30,000 soon after opening the restaurant. It was a leap of faith by both Tana and the seller, given their agreement: a three-year payment schedule of $10,000 a year. In the very beginning it wasn't a roaring success. The challenge was intense competition in the LA dining scene. There were old favorites such as Musso & Franks, Villa Capri, La Scala, The Formosa Cafe, and Chasen's, plus a new restaurant, Matteo's, started by Dan's fellow La Scala staff compadre, Matty "Matteo" Jordan.
For the first two years, the restaurant averaged only twenty-five dinners a night. At one low point, Joe DiMaggio stopped by to eat, and Dan Tana offered him 50% ownership for $15,000. No dice. So Tana did something The Yankee Clipper rarely did—he struck out. But Tana's tenacity and mission eventually succeeded in making Dan Tana's a legendary Hollywood mainstay that thrives to this day.