I usually go to Ken Levine's blog to read something very funny. The other day, I found something sad there: This piece about how one of his favorite restaurants has closed. Anna's over on Pico in West Los Angeles was one of my favorites, as well — for the general friendliness, the comfortable atmosphere and the fine cuisine. I especially liked a dish called Cannelloni Napoletana that was altogether delightful…a mixture of cheese and meat with some barely-detectable spinach, all rolled in a large homemade, crepe-like egg noodle and doused with their fine meat sauce. I'm going to miss it and I'm also going to miss their waiters. Anna's was staffed by seasoned professionals who worked there for decades — not teens or outta-work actors temping while awaiting a permanent career.
Actually, this is the second time I've lost a favorite Italian restaurant at that location. Anna's opened in 1969 in the same building that had previously housed the best place I ever found to eat pasta…an establishment called Zito's. To this day, when I go to a new Italian eatery, it's with the silent hope that it will have a meat sauce like the dark, rich one that Mama Zito used to whip up in her kitchen there. It was quite unlike any I've found since.
A dinner at Zito's was a special treat when I was a kid but it was even better when we did take out. That was because I'd get at least two meals, if not three, for the price of one. Mrs. Zito ran the kitchen. Mr. Zito ran everything else. They both knew our family as regulars and extended a fine, generous offer to us. When we went in for a "to go" order, we'd take in one of my mother's big pots with a lid on it. Allegedly, Mrs. Zito would put in one portion of her spaghetti and meat sauce…but it was usually more like two-and-a-half orders. There'd be enough pasta for two good-sized meals plus enough extra sauce that if my mother cooked a package of Buitoni spaghetti at home, Mrs. Zito's overage could cover that, too. So for about five bucks, I got three full dinners of the best food I ever had in my life.
There was something magical about the food there. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Zito was in my high school class and I briefly considered trying to woo her. I didn't have any romantic interest in Joanne Zito and she had none whatsoever in me. Still, I briefly considered trying to marry her so I could learn the family recipes and then file for divorce. It would have been worth it.
In June of '69, Joanne and I both graduated from University High in West Los Angeles. Following the ceremony, we — my parents, my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Nathan and I — were all going to go out and celebrate. I suggested Zito's, which was close by and which we all loved. Aunt Dot, for one of those odd Aunt Dot reasons, insisted we all go way, way downtown to Little Joe's, a celebrated downtown Italian restaurant where none of us had ever eaten. I argued that since it was my graduation day, we ought to go where I wanted. My father suggested that we work out some sort of compromise between what I wanted and what Aunt Dot wanted…and then we did what she wanted. My father, like you can't tell, was a Democrat.
"You can go to Zito's anytime," Aunt Dot said, which didn't strike me as a good reason. As it turned out, she was wrong about that. I couldn't go to Zito's anytime. It closed a month or so later. A couple named Anna and Mario took the building over and opened Anna's. It was difficult to forget Zito's and judge its successor on its own merits but eventually, I decided that if I measured every Italian restaurant against Zito's, I'd never enjoy pasta again. Anna's wasn't Zito's but it was a darn good place to eat…and successful. Just a few years later, they leased or maybe bought the store next to them, knocked out a wall and doubled their seating capacity.
It was shortly after that that two employees — Tony and Andy — bought out Anna and Mario, kept the name and improved the food even further. Before long, a third room was added and there were nights there, back when the restaurant business was thriving, when they could have used a fourth or fifth. There was also an Anna's out in the Valley for a few years — at the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura, as I recall.
Recently, Tony and Andy got one of those offers one can't refuse…a huge sum of cash to vacate the premises. Anna's closed forever last week and a new, apparently non-Italian restaurant will soon be inhabiting that space on Pico. I didn't hear about it until I read Ken's blog…too late to rush there and have a final Cannelloni Napoletana, though that's not what I'm going to miss most. I'm going to miss the chummy ambiance, the dependability of the place and that great feeling of familiarity. Oh, yeah — and the ghosts of Zito's.