By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief
The number of Palisadian restaurants where you might enjoy a cocktail with your food is set to double over the next few months—from two to four.
Local restauranteurs are taking on the tricky rules and massive expense of applying for “Type 47 full-line liquor licenses” in advance of Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village complex. It is expected to apply for around seven such licenses.
But the debate could open up cultural fault lines that date back to the foundation of Pacific Palisades by alcohol-abhorring Methodists in 1922.
Right now, adults can only order a martini with their repast at Taste in The Highlands and Pearl Dragon in The Village. Other popular restaurants can offer wine and beer, but are unwilling to spend around $80,000 applying for the Type 47 license from the city of Los Angeles.
Two familiar enterprises won the support of the Pacific Palisades Community Council to step up their menu at its last meeting on Thursday, April 27.
Kay ‘N Dave’s, the Village cantina currently being remodeled after an electrical fire last October, is seeking city permission to serve margaritas with its Mexican food.
The owner, Dave Licht, told the PPCC he was seeking a full-line license because he was facing a “David and Goliath” struggle with Rick Caruso’s tenants when restaurants open up across Sunset in the summer of 2018.
“For years, people have hassled me, asking about liquor,” he said, shaking his head. “Kay ‘n Dave’s is not about to become a bar—a late-night hangout—we are not a very hip place. But we would like to serve people leaving the movies at the Caruso development.”
The proposal won the warm support of the council, especially from leaders such as Chris Spitz, president emeritus, who said she had been eating there for 25 years and loved it.
There was a similar surge of support for Moka Sushi, which, for the last three years, has been located in the same Palisades Drive plaza as Taste.
There were some prickly questions for Moka Sushi, but more about cramped parking than its proposed expansion to the drinks menu and weekend operating hours.
The PPCC will write letters supporting both licenses to the city, a critical stage in the approval process.
Yet the council ducked a wider-ranging discussion about alcohol across the Palisades, from selling wine in Ralphs or Gelson’s to the protracted approval process for beer and wine sales at the redeveloping Shell station, which observers said has faced great opposition, partially out of fear it will sell alcohol to teenagers and the homeless.
Reza Akef, PPCC representative, said the council should not be dealing with individual cases such as Kay N’ Dave’s without first laying down some principles that would level the playing field for everyone selling alcohol. This suggestion was not taken up.
The Palisades was entirely “dry” until 1950 when the House of Lee restaurant opened on Sunset with a liquor license. According to contemporary reports, Methodist founding fathers warned it would be the end of the Palisades as a family-friendly community.
The House of Lee, established by an immigrant Chinese family, was only granted a liquor license after a city councilor predicted that “good Christian people” would shun it.
Photo courtesy of Lee archives
Lee operated successfully until 2000 when the Lee liquor license was inherited by Pearl Dragon, which occupies the space today.
Apart from Dragon and Taste, there has been one other full-line license-holder in the Palisades, according to Howard Robinson, chair of the PPCC’s new land use committee: Maison Giraud.
The Maison is currently a hole in the ground within the Palisades Village earthworks, but it could re-open in 2018.
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