On my last trip to Los Angeles I wanted to make sure to visit Dan Tana’s Italian restaurant for dinner. It was not terribly difficult to get a reservation. The person who answered the phone was accommodating also, when I wanted to adjust the time. Might have helped that I went on a Monday night, although Monday nights can be busy in West Hollywood.
While there I was seated at a small table for two across from the bar the waiter was deliberate and efficient and essentially told me exactly what to order. Luckily it was very similar to what I had in mind. He said “have a Caesar salad, Chicken Parm and a martini.” That is pretty much my order at every Italian restaurant coincedentally enough. I think I may have already ordered the martini so he may not have called that one.
Dan Tana’s on Santa Monica Boulevard sits like an anchor dropped into 1964 where it has sat nearly unchanged since. For those who appreciate nostalgia and places unchanged by time this is good thing.
The story of the landmark LA restaurant began with Dobrivoje "Dan" Tana a former Yugoslavian professional soccer player who arrived in Los Angeles via a route of postwar borders, ambition, and a $5,000 poker win. Like many before him, he came chasing the mirage of Hollywood. When acting yielded the harsh realities of the industry, Tana found his true calling in hospitality, working the floor at legendary old-world rooms like Villa Capri and La Scala before taking over a modest bungalow a few doors down from the Troubadour.
By the time the 1980s rolled around and the city was caught up in the orbit of the "Showtime" Lakers, Dan Tana’s became an unofficial hardwood sanctuary. Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss was a fixture of the room for decades, spending so many nights in his favorite booth that a plaque featuring a signed championship game program reading "For the best food in town, see Dan Tana’s" was permanently mounted on the wall. The kitchen named its shrimp scampi in his honor. Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Lakes defined the cultural pulse of Los Angeles, and the team spent many nights in the decade eating steaks at Dan Tana’s after leaving the Forum Club.
For its first few years, the small red-and-white striped room barely scraped by, serving sometimes less than two dozen dinners a night. Everything changed in 1966 when a glowing review in the Los Angeles Times painted it as one of the city’s hidden gems. Overnight, the booths filled with a contradictory cross-section of Los Angeles: New Hollywood stars like Jack Nicholson, studio bosses, and journeymen looking for a stiff drink.
Its proximity to the Troubadour also tied Dan Tana’s inextricably to the mythos of rock and roll. It was across these red-checkered tables that Don Henley and Glenn Frey, watching a young woman with an older companion, scribbled the lyrics to "Lyin' Eyes" on a cocktail napkin. When a large fire gutted the interior in 1980, it was the collective outcry of regulars, including a quiet intervention involving the Governor of California to fast-track building permits—that resurrected the room almost exactly as it was.
The famous Chicken Parm.
The food at Dan Tana’s refuses to apologize for being just what it is.. It is an monument to mid-century Italian-American cooking, heavy with garlic, butter, and history. The menu is an archive of the room’s regular clientele, with plates named for the luminaries who ordered the same thing every time in. You have the legendary chicken parmigiana, thick, sweet marinara and blanketed in charred mozzarella, alongside the Caesar salad chopped tableside with a punch of anchovy. Classic steaks and veal cutlets feature the names of old Hollywood character actors and sports greats. As a by product every order turns into a element of LA history. The menu hasn't evolved because it was not meant to.
Dan Tana’s endures because it offers an antidote to modern life. Underneath the glow of the Chianti bottles, the restaurant remains as proof that Los Angeles loves to invent the future, it also secretly longs for the past.