Aw, man, and I love crab cakes, ugh, I'm so excited.
I never get to do this, I never get nice things!
So Pacific Dining Car is a fine dining restaurant
that you can go to at any time of the day,
literally, it's 24 hours, kind of nuts.
And it looks kind of unassuming outside,
but it's super special inside.
Today I brought a special guest with me
who really loves this place.
Where is he?
Hi Lucas!
Hi Serena.
Hi, how are you?
How you doing?
Good, thanks for joining me.
Thank you for having me on your show.
I really appreciate it.
Well, I had to have you come because I saw that
you wrote stories about this place, you've been here.
I did.
It's really special.
Opened in 1921, this is like
roaring 20s heyday, okay.
There's, you know, eight studios in Hollywood
are making 90% of all of the movies.
I think what this embodied at the time
was that opulence and luxury.
This was a really popular place for old time movie stars.
(jazz music)
What I like about this place is
even though it is a fine dining establishment,
you get so many different kinds of people in here.
Yes.
You can come in here in a tux,
you can come in here in club clothes.
That's right.
You can come in here at 4:30 in the morning
and get yourself a steak.
It's very egalitarian in that way.
Definitely.
Which I really love about it.
It's kind of mysterious.
Like there's that guy sitting by himself
at 3 o'clock in the morning dressed to the nines.
And you start thinking, what's his story, you know?
And he's looking at you thinking, what's that guy's story?
It's kind of cool.
You don't end up here on accident.
It's like a little bit of a club.
And you all sort of knew to come here at this place.
Absolutely.
In the dead of night.
I'm a Los Angeles guy, I love Los Angeles.
And this is, to me, the best it has to offer and still is.
(lively jazz music)
I don't think there's anything quite like this
in New York where at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 3 a.m. you can
come and get this level of service and this vibe.
It sort of gets to the differences between LA
and other major cities like Chicago and New York.
New York, in particular, where, day or night,
there's always people out,
there's always people on the street.
LA's not like that, LA shuts down.
1, 2 a.m., bars are done, but really by 9, 10 p.m.,
most of the restaurants are done, too.
People just stay home.
So to have a place like this that is
open all the time is very special.
Just a 24-hour place like this
seems extremely unique to me.
Yeah.
I think you can see why it inspires a following.
And the fact that the place is like a little bit of
a time capsule and just doesn't seem to age.
I think more places should have nets around the lemons.
Yeah, that's a smart move.
You don't want to dig those seeds out.
That nice little bit of steak there.
Nice little baseball steak.
The baseball steak, of course, made famous from a movie
I know you've seen ten times, Training Day.
Full disclosure, I actually haven't seen Training Day.
What is the scene?
Ethan Hawke's sort of like the young buck.
He comes up, Denzel sort of pats him on the back
and is like, go get yourself a baseball steak.
In the Training Day scenario, do you think,
who is Denzel and who is Ethan Hawke with us?
Oh, I'm probably Denzel.
I agree, I agree.
I love the roasted garlic, I love, kind of squeeze it
and the little bulbs kind of pop right out of there, boink.
When you come here, you can kind of order whatever you want.
It doesn't necessarily have to be on the menu.
If they have the ingredients, they're going to
try their best to make it for you.
There's no breakfast burrito on the menu,
but if you come in and you're like,
you know what man, I really want a breakfast burrito,
they're going to try to make you a breakfast burrito.
They're going to try really hard.
I mean, you're going to pay 30 dollars for it,
but they're going to try.
And it's probably going to be pretty good.
Excuse my fingers, I love home style potatoes.
The soft, sweet onion.
And this is a huge pile, I think this is like 35 dollars.
That is a massive pile.
Yeah, you better have a big pile.
(jazz music)
I came in here late one night, I may have been on a date.
This must've been a really good date.
It must've been going well if you came here afterwards.
Super good.
And there was people that looked like diplomats
sitting in some booth.
A whole family, with children,
it was like two in the morning.
I was like, why aren't your kids in bed?
That's ridiculous.
Then a couple wheeler dealer types who you think
might be talking about closing a deal on a movie
or something like that.
It struck me as the time, it was like, oh wow,
there's just every conceivable kind of person
in this place right now.
And then you and your date.
(laughs loudly)
Serena, you became very personal about my date.
I'm trying to talk about the restaurant.
Well thank you for bringing me, it's been fun.
It's been my pleasure.
Hang on, just got to get some ketchup here.
I always bring my own ketchup.
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