For those of you who don't know Los Angeles: La Cienega Boulevard is located on the Eastern-most side of what could barely be called Beverly Hills. And on La Cienega, there used to be a stretch of several blocks known as Restaurant Row — one great place to eat after another. Most of those restaurants are long gone. I think the only one that remains that has any smidgen of history is Lawry's, famous for its prime rib, elegant service and corresponding prices. And even Lawry's moved a couple of times on Restaurant Row.
One dining spot there I really miss is Ollie Hammond's Steak House, which was roughly across the street from where Lawry's is now situated. It was a great place to get a real meal at any hour of the day. When it was still there and open for biz, it was a few doors down from where Lawry's used to be. It takes guts for a restaurant to sell prime rib that close to Lawry's. Imagine trying to open a competing theme park next door to Disneyland.
Ollie Hammond's had a much more diverse menu than Lawry's and it was not only open 24 hours but it had a full menu at any hour except when its breakfast menu displaced it for a few hours each morn. Usually if you go into a restaurant at 3 AM, your choices are slim. The guy in the kitchen at that hour knows how to make sandwiches, eggs, hamburgers and not much else. If there is anything else, he's probably reheating something cooked by the day or evening chef(s).
This was not the case at Ollie Hammond's. At 3 AM there, you had a wide range of freshly-prepared options, sometimes even including a baked potato. Try getting a baked potato at any other restaurant in the middle of the night. I liked the steaks there. I liked the soup du jour which always seemed to be a tasty tomato concoction with ground beef and pasta noodles that people informally but not inaccurately called "spaghetti soup." On Sunday until about 2 PM, they served a corned beef hash that still has folks salivating.
The other thing I remember about Ollie Hammond's is that they had a waiter who was a dead ringer for actor Bill Bixby. This was not just my opinion. Everyone mentioned it and he once told my date and me that some patrons refused to believe he was not that guy researching a role or picking up a few bucks between series or something of the sort. He said that Bill Bixby had come by a few times and gotten very spooked by the resemblance. I always wondered if anyone who wrote on any of the many shows in which Mr. Bixby starred ever thought to whip up an "evil twin" episode or something of the sort and to hire this waiter to play whichever role Bixby wasn't playing at the moment. You'd have sworn they did it Patty Duke-style with a split-screen.
I don't recall exactly when Ollie Hammond's closed. On an old blog of mine, I said that it had burned down but I'm now questioning where I heard that. An online search doesn't yield any such information except from sites that seem to have read or quoted what I wrote. Maybe someone reading this who has access to one of those online newspaper archives can see what they can find out about it.
I do remember that a few years later, a new restaurant was announced for the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Doheny — not that far away — and it was said that it would emulate Ollie Hammond's with a similar menu and 24 hour service. It was called Kate Mantilini but then it didn't offer either and while it was a decent place to dine, I'm still feeling a little disappointment, more so after it closed in June of 2014. It was there for 27 years but then the landlord raised the rent too much (in the opinion of Kate Mantilini's owners) and I think that space may still be vacant.
All that remains of Ollie Hammond's are a few bits of memorabilia like this very, very old menu…
And this postcard…
And here we have some unassembled matchbook covers, one from when Ollie Hammond's had three locations in town. The one on Wilshire would have been near the Ambassador Hotel. The one at Third and Fairfax would have been very convenient to me and I might be there right now having a steak or that great hash. As I guess I've made pretty clear, I really liked the place.
