Dan Tana's

Dan Tana's has been at 9071 Santa Monica Boulevard since 1964, next to the Troubadour. Its founder, born Dobrivoje Tanasijević, had been a professional footballer in Yugoslavia before he came to Los Angeles, worked in its restaurants and tried acting. As the Troubadour booked bigger and bigger acts, the restaurant became where everyone went after the show.

Nothing has been allowed to change much, and that is the appeal. Red leather booths, red and white checked tablecloths, Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling. The bar has had famous constancy too: the Los Angeles Times marked the restaurant's fiftieth anniversary with a bartender, Michael Gotovac, who had been pouring there for forty-seven of them.

The chicken parmigiana is the order, and has been for decades.

The food is old Hollywood Italian. The chicken parmigiana is the order, and has been for decades.

It runs late, which is the right time to go: after a show, at a booth, with a bottle of red. SFGate, sixty years on, still counted it among the city's hardest tables. Why it impresses: it is Hollywood's kitchen table, as Air Mail called it, and you are sitting at it.

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