A Running List of L.A. Restaurants That I Still Love Despite Mediocre Food

I posted this on Twitter last week. Everyone has a favorite place like this. I have two: Casa Vega, where the cuisine is what a recent transplant from Iowa sixty years ago might think Mexican food is supposed to be, and Edendale, which always has only one good thing on the menu, but the minute too many people figure out what that dish is, they eighty-six it. It's as if the management wants their dining room to be empty all the time—which, if true, would be a decision I support because the Edendale vibe is well-served by its never being crowded.

Casa Vega and Edendale have another thing in common: Old Hollywood. There's a booth in Casa Vega where a brass plaque commemorates a scene from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that was filmed at the booth authentically. (I sat in that booth recently and drank a margarita like I had a three-picture deal at Paramount, while stomaching an enchilada with sour cream on it.) The walls of Edendale are lined with stills from Tom Mix cowboy movies, shot at the silent era movie studio on whose ruins Edendale now sits. 

Turns out, if a restaurant has Old Hollywood vibes, I don't care what they serve.

People who responded to my tweet felt similarly about other old-timey Los Angeles restaurants. Smoke House, in Burbank; the great vibe, bad food. Micelli's, in Hollywood, where Sinatra once ate, but probably wouldn't today. One friend named Canter's, which shocked me at first, but then I had to acknowledge that, yes, Canter's is no Langer's. But I had lunch with my dad there the day I was bar mitzvahed, so it will live forever in my heart. Canter's not only has a vibe, but it also has a sub-vibe, by virtue of its association with Haim and Guns N' Roses. The Rainbow, which another friend posted, is also haunted by hair metal, palpably, and reinforced by the patrons who still dress like Mötley Crüe groupies from 1988, while the entrees there are best described as "edible."