Palisades Dining Legends of Yesteryear

A Look Back at Three Beloved and Historically Significant Pacific Palisades Restaurants

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER | Contributing Writer

There are restaurants in Pacific Palisades and then there are restaurants—iconic local hubs which, decades later, Palisadians still talk about and reference with a warm, nostalgic glow.

The following are three of those destinations that not only fed the tummies of several generations of locals but also fed their imagination, lingering amid childhood memories many years after they have gone away.

HOUSE OF LEE 

Today, Pearl Dragon thrives at 15229 West Sunset Boulevard as a pan-Asian fusion kitchen with a full bar where locals can go to enjoy happy hour specials and drink hot sake with their Big Buddha and Makimoto Rolls.

However, Palisadians shouldn’t take drinking there for granted. Sixty-five years ago, a Chinese kitchen at that very address won the hard-earned battle to become the first restaurant in the Methodist-founded Palisades to officially serve alcohol.

Opened in 1950, House of Lee once gave this town some color and ethnic flavor as a family-friendly destination, while its adjoining Wing Ding Room bar gave locals a low-key gathering place to unwind.

Awash in velvet paintings and red vinyl booths, Ah Wing Young’s Chinese restaurant had character, and many actors made his bar their ‘House of Libations.’ James Arness, Richard Widmark and Anthony Quinn passed through the strung beads designating the Wing Ding Room a family-free forbidden zone. You could have called this joint the ‘House of Lee Marvin’ given the amount of time the “Dirty Dozen” star spent there.

Other stars were spotted there, too: Patrick “The Prisoner” McGoohan, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Harris, James Whitmore, Peter O’Toole, Richard “Paladin” Boone, “Mission: Impossible” star Peter Graves, even Steve McQueen.

Inexpensive and far from chichi, House of Lee indulged in old-school Chinese kitsch.

Owners Ah Wing and Kay Young were very involved civically and a big part of the Palisades tapestry in the 1950s and ’60s.

Born in 1907, Ah Wing Young came to America in 1922 from Canton, after his American-born father died young. Raised by his uncles in Philadelphia, Young entered the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and married Kay, a California-bred Chinese-American he met in New York.

In 1947, the Youngs came to L.A.’s Chinatown district to start a new life together. Contractor Bob Wilson, an old friend from Kay’s school days, helped Ah Wing obtain Palisades land for his grand business plan.

House of Lee became the first business on the north side of Sunset Boulevard between Swarthmore and Monument, opening with a bang worthy of a Chinese New Year fireworks display. The town’s conservative Methodist contingent initially made a fuss over Young’s pursuit of a hard-liquor license. He won, landing the only such license in the business district.

In 1957, the Youngs moved into their residence at 857 Castaic Place, where they raised their daughter. She eventually married Lieutenant Alan Eggleston, a U.S. Navy pilot stationed at Barber’s Point in Hawaii, and had sons Christopher and Kevin.

Ah Wing Young, who was very involved with the Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce and American Legion 283, won Citizen of the Year honors in 1958 for his efforts to get the Legion building established on La Cruz Drive, and he promptly donated the $100 prize to the Palisades Youth House.

“I am in love with this community, and I want to make the community a better place to live in for our children,” Young said at the time.

In 1973, Young sold his restaurant to his cousin, Jimmy Fong.

“I would see Ah Wing from time to time at Mort’s,” Palisadian Peter Graves said. “He always remembered who everybody was. He was a dear, dear soul.”

Young passed away in 1994.

“I’m going to take it easy,” Fong told the Post in February 2000, after announcing that House of Lee was up for sale. “Twenty-six years is a long time.”

Alas, Fong died of cancer on April 21 that year.

House of Lee served its last Mai Tai on June 1, 2000, after which, a group of investors, including lifelong Palisadian Tommy Stoilkovich, bought the establishment and converted it into the Pearl Dragon (after a brief flirtation with the name Little Buddha).

THE HOT DOG SHOW

Located on 15135 Sunset Boulevard across from another kiddie-magnet—the old Bay Theatre —there really wasn’t anything like The Hot Dog Show and there hasn’t been ever since.

In the late 1940s, a small chain of roadside eateries called The Hot Dog Show opened throughout Los Angeles. The branch opened in Pacific Palisades swiftly became a local favorite, not to mention a popular hangout for teens.

Unlike the rectangular original Studio City location, the Palisades Hot Dog Show, painted bright red with white-striped trim, sported mid-century Googie flourishes: a slanted roof over the dining room, plus the chain’s signature gingerbread-house style finishings.

On the establishment’s double doors, illustrations presented the Hot Dog Show’s self-professed “Heavenly Hot Dogs”—cartoony wieners with angel wings and halos ascending into the clouds.

Anyone who visited The Hot Dog Show will always remember the toy train winding its way around on a round-trip inside the dining room. Nor could they forget the pun-tastic names attributed to the citizen canine hot dog menu: the Dachshund, the Chihuahua, the Mutt, and so on—all served in red plastic baskets.

The end of the ’60s also marked the end of an era for The Hot Dog Show when Paul DeGrazia and Eif Hoffman bought The Hot Dog Show in 1969.

DeGrazia was born on Dec. 4, 1926 in Chicago. Tall for his age, he joined the Navy and served with the SeaBees in the Aleutian Islands during World War II, helping to build airstrips. After moving to Los Angeles post-war, he joined the LAPD in 1948 and served for eight years until he was shot in the back while on duty. Suddenly retired on disability in 1956, DeGrazia entered a new field, employed by a bar and a liquor store before acquiring The Hot Dog Show with Hoffman.

In 1979, just two years after the Bay Theatre’s closure, DeGrazia, the final owner of Hot Dog Show, sold the restaurant. The Hot Dog Show gave way to other types of retail storefronts at that address over the years while DeGrazia left the restaurant industry, working for a year as an insurance agent before retiring in Las Vegas. On Sept. 10, 2012, DeGrazia died at the age of 85.

MORT’S DELI

Still missed and referenced by Palisadians to this day, Mort’s Deli was the legendary delicatessen started by namesake Mort Farberow in 1974.

With its hefty hot pastrami sandwiches and cozy rustic interior, this de facto community hub was a favorite of many longtime locals, including regulars such as late actor and Palisadian Patrick McGoohan (“The Prisoner,” “Braveheart”), who liked to read his morning paper while drinking coffee there.

Even after Mort Farberow died in 1999, the establishment kept humming along—rallying as a community gathering place with locals riveted to the news on its TV screens following the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and even surviving a March 30, 2005 armed robbery—until March 31, 2007, a day of infamy in Pacific Palisades when Mort’s closed.

By 2008, restaurateur and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan acquired Mort’s Deli and Oak Room. When it reopened after several months of renovation, it did so as a revived Oak Room and, in Mort’s place, the Village Pantry, the Westside annex of Riordan’s popular downtown diner The Pantry. Riordan, also the longtime owner of Gladstones, had bought widow Bobbie Farberow’s liquor license.

“Of course, Mort’s is the best, and it’s high in my mind,” said Riordan, a Brentwood resident and longtime friend of the Farberows.

Unfortunately, Riordan’s renovations and culinary references to his predecessor were not enough to replace Mort’s Deli in the hearts of Palisadians and the Village Pantry closed down a couple of years later. Several more delicatessens, including Lenny’s and Steve’s, opened and failed in the location.

Today, it is part of the Palisades Village project currently being developed by Rick Caruso, who has promised to bring a deli to the Palisades. Whether it will go into the former Mort’s location remains to be seen.