I leaned back in the leather booth and contemplated the great pile of thick mozzarella cheese and meaty red sauce before me. Is this good drunk food? I asked myself. Would the readers of LAist find late-night sustenance in this giant bowl of classic spaghetti-and-marinara? Is this a meal worthy of sopping up the various bitter brews that wreak such havoc on our sobriety and on our mornings after?

I looked at the rapidly disappearing carafe of house Burgundy at my side and decided: yes. Yes, this is late-night eats to soothe even the most savage drunk munchies.

Little Toni's in North Hollywood is defiantly old school, a neighborhood joint through-and-through, where hungry familes come to gorge on the near-New-York-quality pizza, and where the waitresses chat up their regulars like old friends. The place doesn't look like much from the outside -- located on an awkward corner of Lankershim and Vineland (if you're walking, like we were, there isn't a lot of crosswalk access), the battered yellow walls and unimposing entrance belie the bustling family atmosphere within.

The food is also defiantly old school -- these are Italians recipes like the ones Chef Boyardee used to make, decidedly ungourmet and terrible -- I mean terrible -- for your waistline. Every entree automatically comes with a pile of spaghetti and meat sauce, and if that's not enough, you can choose from every possibly variation on cheese, red sauce, and pasta you could ever imagine: spaghetti, ravioli, manicotti, cannelloni, lasagna, fettucine, and would you like some fried squid on top of all of that?

The soup and salad appetizers we got with our meals were pretty much of the Olive Garden variety -- the caesar dressing was definitely from a bottle, and I'm pretty sure my minestrone might have come from some giant industrial vat. No matter, though, a plate of crunchy calamari was soon to follow. While the white flesh of the squid was a little too rubbery, the tentacles had a fantastic crunch and texture. There wasn't enough marinara sauce on the side, however, which is surprising given that they seem to pour that stuff all over every available surface.

Then the entrees arrived: one plate of eggplant parmesan, one plate of manicotti. Both dishes arrived encased in cheese -- I mean, the thick, gooey mozzarella that you can feel sliding down your throat and forming huge clumps in your stomach. The kind of cheese that worries you. I could not detect what my eggplant might look like under all that cheese, but I dove in anyway after peeling back most of the gooey blanket. It was pretty much cooked down into mush, without any sort of crunchy crust, but the flavors weren't bad and it didn't taste like it came from a can.

Maybe we had hit some sort of sweet spot of timing, or maybe our waitress (who looked older than my grandmother) was just that good, but we enjoyed the rare pleasure of good service -- meaning quick, unobtrusive, and respectful. The courses came out at the perfect time, our waitress checked in just enough to keep us happy, and she let us sit for what seemed like ages after we paid our bill just so we could finish our wine and our lively conversation. And on a late Friday night, this place was packed -- with families, couples, friends, old people, young people, all of whom looked as if they'd been going to this place for years. It's not a hip party scene by any stretch of the imagination, but if you're stumbling home from another hip party scene, Little Toni's is the warm, homey kitchen you want to sink in to in order to feed your late night cravings.

The manicotti was almost indistinguishable from the eggplant -- just a rearrangement of the cheese blanket and accompanying sauce. It would have benefited from some time under the broiler, just long enough to crisp the edges and give it some texture and crunch. But with that ubiquitous side of spaghetti, one entree is enough to feed three people. The leftovers are sitting in our fridge this very moment, the cheese probably turning into a stone as we speak.

The best surprise of the night, though, honestly, was the bill: for a calamari appetizer and two entrees, both of which came with a side of soup or salad and a hefty helping of spaghetti, plus a carafe of red wine, the total came out to fifty bucks. Fifty bucks for a mountain of food and all the wine two people could possibly stand? Brilliant! I gave the waitress a more generous tip than I had planned, simply because I was so excited.

It ain't fancy and it ain't particularly pretty, but we'll be going to Toni's again for its unpretentious service, its cozy neighborhood vibe, and its heaping portions of carb-errific old school Italian eats. That drunken stumble home never felt so good.

Little Toni's
4745 Lankershim Blvd
North Hollywood 91602
818-763-0131
Open til 2am every night.