![]() ![]() Our first menu focuses exclusively on briney, beautiful bivalves-and at a price that’ll make your wallet happy as a clam. Take advantage of it with $1 oysters, $5 Japanese-inspired cocktails and mix-and-match amari drinks, all on some excellent patios. Even without the Prohibition-era bowling alley, even if the DJ didn’t play obscure 80’s synth-pop, I’d still go for random cocktails like It’s Complicated Being A Wizard, (tequila, smoked juniper, disco salt, aka a flashing rave bead in the ice.) You can always hit up Hotels Tonight to bring the party upstairs to the Marilyn Monroe Suite.Summer may be coming to a close, but while much of the country is soaking up the last of their warm-weather days, in L.A., we’ve got an entire season of patio weather ahead. Inside, you never know who’s hiding in the dark cave of Teddy’s Bar under the Moorish arches, filling up on cheese plates, Pinot and Negronis, but they’re probably avoiding whoever’s hiding upstairs in The Spare Room. Word to the wise: They will pre-authorize your card for that $400 bottle of Casamigos, so be sure you can swing it before ordering for your new pool friends. The Tropicana on weekends is more day-club than sleepy sunbathing, but you can still ogle the David Hockney mural on the pool floor or cozy around the fire pit in the evening chill. The Spanish Colonial Revival is classic Hollywood, a Historic-Cultural Monument, and still holds up. Hiding in plain sight on an overwhelming, cheese-infested tourist stretch of the Boulevard, Ellis brings the Roosevelt to life in Imperial Bedrooms as his recurring anti-hero, Clay, drifts into the bar after a film screening at the Chinese Theatre. Until I get my bearings in this town, I’m happy to let that person be Ellis-at least when it comes to legendary restaurants that are so steeped in lore I never would have assumed natives unironically go there, but they are very real epitomes of past and present California culture. I need someone to tell me what’s right, and I need someone to tell me what’s wrong, says one of his less reprehensible characters. There are so many things about which we agree, about music and television and culture, that it makes sense to me why the references in his novels have always felt real. ![]() We’re so stuffed, so full of Bufala mozzarella and house made ravioli and sea scallops that I’m dizzy, but he lets me choose dessert anyway, something seasonal with caramel and pumpkin. Ellis himself drinks gin on the rocks and uses his fingers a lot because he likes to feel what he’s eating. Hippo in Highland Park, however, transcends this criteria when he declares it “a nightmare of deliciousness.” Ellis loves food, and anyone who’s read him knows that his characters really only care about where to go, who to go with, and what to order. “My only requirement for restaurants these days is that I can hear you talk.” “Do you care where we sit? They’ll seat us right now if we sit outside, but if we sit inside there’s a wait,” he greets me, rapidfire, as if we’ve known each other for years. We’d met only once at a party, but he makes a beeline for me through the crowd and we crash into a sort of half bear hug. ![]() Through a bizarre series of events, we end up at dinner together, and I learned what countless restaurant companions knew before me: Ellis is a freaking delight to dine with. When I first moved here, I already knew I wanted to follow an itinerary focused on Ellis’ glittering literary landmarks -so imagine my surprise when, not long after arriving in California, I came across Ellis himself. Street names, restaurants, and clothing labels are sprinkled on every page like breadcrumbs over a map of the city. Errands, hangovers, spats with obnoxious friends. For me, the image of Los Angeles first came into focus with Bret Easton Ellis’s novels, the first glimpse I had of daily life in L.A., (at least for a certain kind of person). ![]()
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