The Brief

It’s nighttime in Beverly Hills in the swinging 1960s. As commuters speed by on Santa Monica Boulevard, they probably don’t even notice the squat, windowless building with a single entrance.

But on any given night, Hollywood legends like Frank Sinatra, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, George Raft, Don Rickles, Jack Lemmon, Gregory and Veronique Peck, Kirk Douglas, Sammy Davis Jr., Jimmy Stewart, Anthony Quinn or Henry Fonda may be dining inside, away from the paparazzi, drinking scotch and swapping stories in slick red leather booths, while eating hearty red sauce Italian meals served by discreet waiters in sharp tuxedos.

This was La Dolce Vita, which the LA Time’s Jean McMurphy once called “a neighborhood restaurant for the rich and famous.” A clubby, tiny eatery where reservations were essential — even Sinatra occasionally had to wait. For over five decades, new generations of high-flying insiders would frequent La Dolce Vita, including George Clooney, designer Tom Ford, Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, editor Graydon Carter, and former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.

But during the pandemic, like so many L.A. area restaurants, the lights went out at La Dolce Vita. In 2023, after a three-year closure, it was reopened by international dynamos Marc Rose and Med Abrous of hospitality group Call Mom, who also own L.A. staples The Spare Room and Genghis Cohen.

“The first day Med and I walked in here with the actual keys, I looked at him and was like, ‘Well, it's ours to f— up,’” Rose says.

And true to La Dolce Vita’s A-list atmosphere, the new owners are keeping the restaurant’s secrets they have heard from old-timers to themselves.

“We get a lot,” Rose says. “We tend to want to keep those stories internal and share them with people when the times are right, because that's what it's for. When you build a clubhouse, you kind of want those stories to be here permanently.”

In many ways, Rose and Abrous are a throwback to La Dolce Vita’s original founders. There have been many celebrity mainstays over the years — The Brown Derby, Chasen’s, The Formosa, Perino’s, Romanoff’s, Ma Maison, Musso and Frank — and few are left. But La Dolce Vita survived, perhaps because it served up nostalgia to celebrities who had already become past-their-prime legends themselves and were tired of the rat race — they were looking for a bit of home.

Marc Rose (left) and Med Abrous, the owners of La Dolce Vita.

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Shelby Moore

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George Smith and Jimmy Ullo were second and third generation Italians — East coast transplants who had spent decades working in the upscale eatery industry in Los Angeles. According to a 1976 profile by the LA Times Lois Dawn, they met at the popular Italian restaurant Villa Capri, where Smith was a bartender and Ullo was maître d’hotel. When Smith and Ullo decided to start their own Italian restaurant, they went to two Villa Capri regulars, 1930s movie star (and known Mafia associate) George Raft, and old blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

“[They] went to Frank and said, ‘we're going to open our own place,’” Rose says. “So, I think Mr. Sinatra agreed to become an investor and a backer of the place. I think — this isn't written anywhere — it was like, ‘well, I'm going to do it, but I want it to be my clubhouse too.’ And I think that when you see a building … that has no windows, it's an easy place to make your clubhouse and to do things behind closed doors.”

Frank Sinatra in 1968

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection

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Los Angeles Public Library

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La Dolce Vita opened in 1966 at 9785 Santa Monica Blvd. In true Hollywood fashion, the interior was designed by Jerry Wunderlich, an Oscar-nominated set decorator for TV shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the film The Exorcist. “La Dolce Vita is designed with seeming simplicity. Brick walls, wine bottles, straight, uncluttered lines, a marvelous use of glasses on the back bar,” Lois Dawn wrote in a review. Little did she know- the brick was fake.

“The layout was also something that really had this clubhouse feeling,” Rose says. “It's all booths. There's no loose seating or anything. It was really built for groups in a certain kind of dining, this kind of familial dining that is associated with American Italian restaurants.”

La Dolce Vita's dining room is known for its charm and atmosphere.

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Shelby Moore

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La Dolce Vita soon became a Rat-Pack era staple, where the Hoboken, New Jersey-born Sinatra felt right at home. The expansive menu featured entrees with names like “Steak Sinatra” and “Veal Fellini” which was a “marvelous melting combine of eggplant, prosciutto and mozzarella.” The mozzarella was a guest favorite, with tomato sauce as “fresh as a garden.”

The chefs were also glad to whip up anything patrons desired, even if it was off menu. And when Chef Gino Giglio found himself an ingredient down, he improvised. “Film producer Robert Evans wanted rigatoni one night when they were out of ricotta cheese,” The Los Angeles Times reported in 1976, “so they made up a dish with bechamel and parmigiana and now serve it often.”

Beloved, longtime maître d’ Reuben Castro started working at La Dolce Vita in 1974 when he was 21 and became an expert at knowing what his celeb clientele wanted. '[Sinatra] always pasta or steak, nothing else,” he told Piers Morgan of The Mail on Sunday in 2013. “He loved veal Milanese or rigatoni pomodoro, and arugula salad with shaved parmesan ... Red wine, like a Sassicaia, if he was with his wife. But if it was a boys' night then Jack Daniels all the way. It was always Daniels, and always on the rocks.”

Try the veal.

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Shelby Moore

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Celebrities like the Reagans, Don Rickles, and Sinatra had their preferred booths, and the telephone was always ready to be whisked to a table for important industry calls. “Frank Sinatra would hold court at booth No. 1 and tip royally, announcing to anybody that the staff at the restaurant was family,” Castro told The Los Angeles Times in 2004. When a kitchen worker’s watch broke, Sinatra gave him a Rolex.

Another time, the Times reported that George Raft “put the keys to his white 1974 Coupe de Ville on the table and told Castro he was too old to drive. ‘It’s over,’ he said.’ I’m giving you my car.’”

Things were perhaps too comfortable at La Dolce Vita. Castro remembered one uncomfortable moment when President Ronald Reagan suffered from gas. “He once stood up and farted very loudly,” Castro told The Mail on Sunday. “I couldn't ignore it, so I stood to attention and said, ’Salute, Mr. Presidente!’ And he laughed so loudly I thought he would fall over!"

But an air of menace occasionally swirled around La Dolce Vita. Sinatra, his daughter Tina (who is a part of the restaurant’s current ownership group) recalled, refused to sit with his back to the door.

“We once had a hoodlum shoot up the outside of the door after an argument over a reservation,” Castro recalled. “Frank heard about it, and a few weeks later he came in and said to me, ‘Don't worry about that guy again, we took care of it.’ I never found out what that meant, but that guy never came back to shoot at my door again!'”

The old timers would patronize La Dolce Vita until their deaths. Some of its mystique and popularity died with them. "Here was a piece of real Hollywood history that was at risk of going away forever. It was criminal," film producer Alessandro Uzielli told Town and Country in 2013.

New owners

In 2003, Uzielli and his producing partners Ben Myron and David Simmer purchased La Dolce Vita. They refurbished it and honored the past by putting plaques up at departed regulars’ favorite booths. All was going well, until the pandemic hit.

That’s where Rose and Abrous stepped in. “Med and I grew up together and we grew up in New York City,” Rose says. “We grew up going to restaurants very much like this… These are the restaurants I've been going to with my dad who was also in the business, which I swore I would never be. And here I am. But these are the restaurants that I remember seeing my dad walk in and tip every single person on the way to the table. And I'm like, ‘how do you even know that that guy's going to be your table?’ And one time he said to me, he goes, ‘I don't, but I guarantee you my bread's going to come out warm.’”

For Rose and Abrous, reviving La Dolce Vita was a no-brainer. “We like to amplify the richness of history, both architecturally design wise and in a city in which we live,” Abrous says. “Our families are here; our kids go to school here. Why not do something kind of small and special? And that does give us all that kind of nostalgic feelings that really sparked our passion for hospitality in the first place.”

The duo worked with designer Victoria Gillet of We Are Dada to enhance the restaurant’s interior. Without changing the clubby layout, they gave it a modern twist — adding stained glass windows depicting cheetahs in empty coves, a cheetah carpet, pearly wood walls, and a revamped bar.

The bar at La Dolce Vita.

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Shelby Moore

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“The words sexy and chic came up a lot, which you don't always associate with spaghetti and meatballs, but we felt that they could be because we felt that way when we went into those restaurants,” Rose says.

“We always make the joke that when we first walked into the restaurant, it looked like it was right out of Goodfellas and now it looks like it's in Casino,” Abrous says.

They focus on locally grown produce and have curated a small red sauce menu which includes spaghetti and meatballs, tuna tartare, Caesar salad (made tableside), Veal Parmigiana, Clams Oreganata, and Bucatini al Limone — which can appeal to the health conscious and hearty eaters alike.

“We understand that people's palates have changed, the way they eat has changed. Even the way in California versus New York is different- the way people eat. And we paid attention to that,” Rose says. “Of course, there's a veal parm on the menu that is amazing and incredible … but there's also the most beautiful branzino piece of fish that you could eat.”

In the 10 months since it reopened, La Dolce Vita has proved that Angelenos are eager to see their history saved, and to savor the intimacy of a service-forward, secretive spot. It’s also a wonderful place for people watching, where grizzled rock stars sit in a booth next to sunny starlets, and old timers talk to friendly waiters at the bar while serious men in designer suits streak past to their booths. But it doesn’t feel pretentious, but rather like an upscale hole-in-the-wall that happens to be in the middle of Beverly Hills.

“It’s arguably the most famous zip code on the planet,” Abrous says. “And you think about the Rodeos of it all and the tourism and all, and you forget, it's a real neighborhood. There's so much residential up and down the streets here. People have a restaurant to go to where they feel good and they feel safe and they feel- I hate to say it, this sounds like an ad for Olive Garden — like you're at home. It's a special feeling.”

Held by the Los Angeles Review of Books since 2019, LITLIT, or The Little Literary Fair, started out as a way to introduce students from workshops to the publishing industry.

It has since grown into a gathering of independent West Coast publishers from Seattle to Santa Monica. This year’s iteration on June 6 and 7 is the biggest yet, with more than 50 publishers participating in the event at Sci-Arc in Downtown L.A.

People look through a small library of used books from "A Good Used Book," a Los Angeles based book pop-up, during LITLIT 2024.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

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It’s ‘small’ lit

The fair aims to get the public in front of books that don’t originate from the so-called “Big Five” publishers — behemoths like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins.

“They really get to control what people get to see, and so we hope LITLIT lets people see more of what is out there and what they can support directly,” said Emily VanKoughnett, public programs and engagement director for LARB.

One of VanKoughnett’s favorite independent publishers will be there. Two Lines Press, the publishing arm of San Francisco’s Center for the Art of Translation, deals specifically in translated works.

Two Lines Press, which specializes in translated works, show off their books to attendees of LITLIT.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

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They’ve published authors from across the world, translating books from more than 100 different languages into English.

“ We do our work in quiet rooms, so it's really nice to be able to meet readers and talk to them about what's interesting them. These festivals are really valuable to us in that way,” said CJ Evans, publisher and editor-in-chief of Two Lines.

Pressed locally

Local favorite Angel City Press, which operates under the auspices of L.A. Public Library, will also be there with one of their newly published titles, Los Angeles Central Library POPS, that celebrates 100 years of the Central Library.

People at LITLIT 2024 look through different small presses.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

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You’ll also find LA-based Errant Press, which specializes in books that break the traditional form — like a poem printed on measuring tape or a matchbox sized poetry collection.

“It’s really cool to see the kinds of risks that people are able to take, the kinds of communities they’re able to serve and really highlight here on the West Coast,” said Irene Yoon, executive director of LARB.

Panels, printing presses, and workshops

The two-day fair also hosts various panels and workshops, including one on the art of comedic writing and another on how to tell the stories of Los Angeles through archival materials.

“This is, I think, the most panels we've ever done,” VanKoughnett said.

People sit down for a panel discussion at LITLIT 2024.

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Los Angeles Review of Books

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Workshops on how to navigate the literary world with a completed manuscript and making your own comics and zines are also on the itinerary.

And Carson’s International Printing Museum will demonstrate how to screen print your own bookmark.

“It's not until we're all in the same room with all our best books literally out on the table that you get to see kind of what a phenomenal publishing culture Los Angeles truly has,” said Terri Accomazzo, editorial director of Angel City Press.

Running a small business is tough under normal circumstances. Running one in a wildfire burn scar can feel nearly impossible.

That's the reality many Altadena business owners are still navigating nearly a year and a half after the Eaton Fire destroyed the community and the local economy. Businesses are grappling with how do you stay open when so many of your customers are gone?

At Wet Paws, a pet grooming business along Lake Avenue, that question recently came to a head.

The shop reopened in January but business remained slow. Wet Paws co-owner Stephanie Trujillo estimates the fire had displaced up to 90% of their customers.

Marley, a Cane Corso from Pasadena, went for her first grooming session at Wet Paws in more than a year.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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Then came a conversation with their landlord several months ago that forced a decision.

"He reached out and said, 'Are you going to re-sign your lease?'" Trujillo recalled.

The answer wasn't obvious.

"I said, unfortunately, we're not even making it. We're paying out of our own pocket," she said. "So he said, 'I'll give you until June 1.'"

The deadline meant Trujillo and her mother, Linda Alashti, who have owned the business together since 2023, had only a few months to figure out whether Wet Paws had a future in Altadena.

Wet Paws is hardly alone. As businesses struggle, Los Angeles County recently launched a program offering free marketing assistance and storefront improvements to fire-affected businesses. The deadline to apply is June 8.

A flag banner and sandwich board on the sidewalk outside Wet Paws advertises its services.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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The county also operates a gift card program to encourage residents to spend money at fire-impacted businesses.

But relief has not arrived quickly enough for many businesses.

One particularly slow April Sunday at Wet Paws drove home how dire the situation had become, when they had only one customer.

As she drove home to Fontana, Trujillo began composing a social media post.

"So this isn't easy for us to share," the post began, "but I wanted to reach out with an open heart and hope."

In the message, Trujillo asked the community to book appointments and spread the word to help their business survive.

Before posting it, Trujillo showed it to her mother.

Wet Paws groomer Elizabeth Ranes takes care of a basset hound client.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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"We're very prideful, and it's very hard to ask people for help," she said. "I felt embarrassed that we had to ask the community for help."

Her mother's advice was simple. "Just post it," she told her. "The worst that's going to happen is nobody sees it or nobody cares."

Instead, the opposite happened. By the next day, the post had been viewed and shared hundreds of times across Instagram and Facebook.

The phone started ringing, said Wet Paws groomer Elizabeth Ranes.

"I got well over 50 calls," Ranes said. "We booked out for the last three weeks of the month when we made that post.”

Customers told Alashti that they “didn't know you were back, because they don't come this way anymore.”

Decor inside Wet Paws embraces a playful canine motif.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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Among those who returned was Penny Dahlstrom, a Pasadena resident whose 113-pound Cane Corso Marley had been a Wet Paws regular before the fire.

Dahlstrom had tried taking Marley to a large pet store chain while Wet Paws was closed.

"My husband went in to pick her up, and he hears crying, and it was her," Dahlstrom said. "That's not just her nature."

The social media appeal didn't just bring back former customers. It also introduced the business to new ones, Trujillo said.

But recovery remains uneven.

Some days are still slow. And the shop continues to deal with lingering fire-related electrical damage in the back of the building.

Wet Paws is operating on a temporary electrical system, limiting how much power it can use at any given time.

"If we run our AC, and the neighbors run their AC, we lose power," Trujillo said.

As the June 1 lease deadline approached, Trujillo and her mother weighed their options. They could walk away and cut their losses. Or they could commit to rebuilding alongside a community they had come to love.

Ultimately, they thought about the response to their post and the customers who had shown up when the business needed them most. And they had faith that Altadena would rebuild to its full strength.

They chose to renew the lease for another three years.

"I can't imagine what the community is going through, losing their homes and losing everything that they had," Trujillo said. "Yet they're still coming back."

And as long as they do, she said Wet Paws will be there for them and their fur babies.

On a recent Monday, students at Breed Street Elementary in Boyle Heights started their day like no other — with a tour of the murals hand-painted over the weekend across the playground.

It’s the latest of seven elementary schools in and around L.A. to get the treatment. Over 70 murals in the last 13 years, brought by a collective of artists to students in under-resourced neighborhoods with little access to art education.

“The kids were so excited,” said Stefanie Barbee, a math teacher at Breed. “Just pure joy.”

The students snaked through the paintings on handball courts and school walls: cartoon animals, bright orange flowers, a circle of meticulously painted lines. The works span genres and sensibilities.

Mural by artist hi-dutch.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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“It's grassroots. We're not getting money from anyone,” said Erik Caruso, the fifth-grade teacher in Paramount who's the group glue. To them, they are just an assembly of like-minded friends — and friends of friends — who spend one weekend out of the year hanging out and painting murals for school kids.

But the collective is anything but typical. It includes artists like the late Rich Jacobs, who died from leukemia this year; Tim Kerr; pro skater Ray Barbee; and Japanese artists Yusuke Hanai and hi-dutch. The vibe's always low-key, and somehow they've managed to stay under the radar.

Mural by artist Yusuke Hanai.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Mural by artist Yusuke Hanai.

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Sandy Yang / James Hamblin

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“The kids have no idea that they show in huge galleries or have pieces hanging in museums,” said writer Martin Wong, co-founder of the pioneering Asian pop culture magazine Giant Robot. "Or they're famous in the skateboarding scene or surf or music."

Their reward is the Monday morning after, seeing the happiness on the kids’ faces.

“The artists are waiting all weekend — it’s that moment,” Caruso said.

Mural by artists Sandy Yang and James Hamblin.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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James Hamblin was at Breed for the meet-and-greet earlier this month. He painted a mural designed by his partner Sandy Yang on one of the handball walls.

“Sandy's design is pretty abstract, so it was interesting because the kids were [asking], you know, ‘ What is it?’” Hamblin said. “It was great because I could tell them I had no idea and like, ‘What do you guys think it is?’"

Bring the art museum to the school

Erik Caruso.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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The idea came to Caruso in 2011, after he took about two dozen students from his Paramount school to MOCA and discovered that only four had ever been to an art museum.

“I wonder if there's a way we can bring the art museum to the school,” he said.

Caruso, a 24-year veteran, was no stranger to bringing art — and artists — directly to his students. In 2009, he launched a monthly art project for fifth-graders that culminated in a year-end show where they met and shared work with living contemporary artists.

Caruso's 5th grade art project, featuring works by artist Tim Kerr.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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The murals were next.

They painted their first ones at his school in 2012. Soon, the project expanded to the rest of Los Angeles.

Crew at work

Mural by artist Chris Johanson.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Mural by artist Chris Johanson.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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The painting takes place between Friday and Sunday, but planning takes months.

At Breed, the connection was made through math teacher Barbee — wife of Ray — who is on a two-year stint at the Boyle Heights school to help students catch up on the subject.

“I had sort of planted that seed that at some point I would love for a school I was working at to be the recipient of the beautiful work,” she said.

Breed Street Elementary in Boyle Heights.

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Sandy Yang / James Hamblin

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She brought Caruso out for a site visit last September.

“He has a really amazing kind of vision about where to place the artists … based on just their artwork and where it is in relation to the street view,” Barbee said.

Next came an introduction to the principal and the approval process.

“One of the biggest challenges with what we are doing is, you know, they want flipping dolphins and stuff like that,” Caruso said. “But we want to cross over into fine art pieces.”

Mural by artists Lookout & Wonderland

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Mural by artists Lookout & Wonderland

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Paying it forward

Caruso estimated that as many as 40 artists and musicians have joined the effort.

The core group now, he said, is about 11 people, and friends and families often tag along to help out, given they have just 16 hours over three days to finish the job.

Mural by artist Oitama.

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Sandy Yang / James Hamblin

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Mural by artist Lori Damiano.

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Operation Creative Freedom

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Among the regulars: Wong and his wife, Wendy Lau, who once organized DIY punk shows to fund music education at their daughter's Chinatown school. In Caruso, they saw a kindred spirit.

Caruso later brought the collective to paint at that school and eventually invited their daughter, Linda Lindas bassist Eloise Wong, to join his fifth-grade art and music project.

“All of these kids on the blacktop were all just screaming their hearts out,” Eloise said. “It's cool how Erik — Mr. Caruso to them — shows them, like, raw ways to express themselves through cool art.”

A new free record shop for survivors of last year’s Eaton and Palisades fires is celebrating with a grand opening party Saturday night.

After losing his home in the Eaton Fire, Brandon Jay founded Altadena Musicians to get instruments back into the hands of musicians who lost their gear in fires.

Now he’s doing that with vinyl records, too.

“We want to be here to help replace those items and support music in people’s lives that can’t necessarily afford it right now because they’re saving all their pennies just to live and also just to rebuild their homes,” Jay told LAist.

Jay says they’ve seen roughly 3,000 records donated so far. Now they have a dedicated space on Lincoln Avenue where fire survivors can sign up for time slots and shop for up to 10 records a month.

“It’s a really lovely distraction but it kind of keeps me going as well just to know that we’re trying to build something great for the community and keep us all moving forward,” Jay said.

The store will carry copies of the benefit album, Gimme Shelter: Songs for LA Fire Relief. The compilation features cover art by Shepard Fairey and L.A. specific tracks from artists like Elliott Smith ("Angeles" of course), Norah Jones, The Flaming Lips, as well as a cover of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads performed by Jay and about 50 other fire-impacted musicians.