The Smokehouse Burbank

Listening in Los Angeles

I went to the Smokehouse alone, and I didn’t talk to anyone. Some places are made for eavesdropping.

The Smokethouse has been across the street from Warner Brothers since 1946, when two Lockheed Aircraft workers opened a restaurant that seated forty-six people and had no particular ambition beyond feeding them well at a fair price. They said so on the sign. They still do. It took over Danny Kaye’s empty Red Coach Inn a few years later and has been in the same Tudor Revival building on Lakeside Drive ever since. It’s covered in half timbers and river rock, protecting the red leather booths and white tablecloths inside. The dark wood walls are covered in photographs of people who used to be somewhere and are now everywhere, and a pink neon cocktails sign that points you toward the lounge, which you should follow without argument.

Bogart ate here. So did Judy Garland, James Dean, and Sinatra. Let’s be honest, though, that damned Frank was everywhere. I wonder if he ever stayed home and made a bologna sandwich.

Captain and Tennille were discovered in the lounge, and they got so famous that the owners had to rip out the fireplace to build them a stage. George Clooney has a plaque above his favorite booth and named his production company after the place, which is either devotion or the best free advertising in the history of Burbank, likely both.

I ordered a vodka martini at the horseshoe bar and a grilled artichoke with the garlic bread, because you have to order the garlic bread. The Smokehouse calls it the world’s greatest cheesy garlic bread, which is a bold claim. Garlic bread, even with cheese, is simple, and simple is hard to superlative. But it’s super delicious. It arrives hot, as it has since 1946, and there is something to be said for a thing that knows exactly what it is and keeps doing it without apology for eighty years.

An artichoke is a patient food. You pull it apart leaf by leaf, which gives you something to do with your hands while you do what you actually came to do, which is listen to everything going on around you.

Down the bar, an older man was talking about working for Charles Schulz. Not about the work exactly, but about what it was like to be around him, the quality of the attention a man like Schulz brought to a room. He was proud to have been a part of the Peanuts and the legacy they had left for children. He said it the way people talk when they’re not trying to impress anyone.

At a nearby table, a woman was wearing the Big Lebowski sweater, which is a Pendleton cardigan called the Westerly that debuted in 1972 and looks like it. I have one, don’t judge. You have to wear the sweater with the conviction of someone who has made a lifestyle choice, so it doesn’t come across as too ironic. This woman had come to terms with her life. She also wore an expression that said the world was a perfectly adequate place, as she ate alone and read something on her phone.

A man who looked to be near the end of his middle age was waiting in a corner of the lounge when a younger woman walked in and looked towards him. He stood up and greeted her by saying, “Of all the gin joints in all the world”, which would have made sense in the Smokehouse, but really did not since he was clearly expecting her, and she replied with a blank stare, indicating she missed the Casablanca reference. I secretly hoped this was a nefarious meeting, some cliched, clandestine arrangement that would end in a lawsuit and regret, but it seemed they were in the early stages of some creative project. Creative people, or those who present as such, have a specific body language, and there were notebooks placed on the table.

Seated closest to me, at the bar, a September-May couple was discussing the popularity of baseball in Japan, by way of an explanation of the rise of Ohtani and the Dodgers.

Somewhere in the ether of the lounge, I could hear a conversation about money. The subject of money comes up everywhere in Los Angeles, like the weather. Money is everywhere, yet there is never enough, like all this sunshine. All I could hear was that someone owed something. One person had a specific number in mind, and the other may have disagreed.

I had another martini and drank copious amounts of water.

I walked through the hallway towards the valet, and a young man came out of the bathroom talking on his phone. He was attempting to make a date in the manner of a business transaction. His negotiation skills were severely lacking.

There is a ballet in all of it. Everything swirling around you, while you sit still at its center, and I find it all interesting, amusing, and beautiful.

This is what the Smokehouse gives you. Not just the history, though it’s everywhere. In the photographs on the dark walls, in the plaque on Clooney’s booth, in the neon sign that has been making the same promise since 1946, and keeping it. Not the food, though the food is good and the garlic bread is exactly what it claims to be, which is more than most things can say.

What it gives you is fragments of other people’s lives. You don’t get the whole story. You get the edge of it, which is often the most honest part.

I’ll go back and have a proper meal. I want to try the Steak Sinatra, which is filet cuts sauteed with bell peppers, shallots, garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes, and red wine, served over linguini, and maybe a wedge salad with blue cheese. Cholesterol be damned.

Some places are designed for the performance of being somewhere. The Smokehouse is designed to be somewhere, which is rarer than it sounds and worth the drive to Burbank.

I left without talking to anyone.

I knew everything I needed to know.

xAP

Smokehouse Restaurant

4420 Lakeside Dr, Burbank, CA 91505