Many readers may wonder why anyone would care that Kate Mantillini's closed suddenly after many years of service. Kate's became a standard for many of us who had the misfortune of living and working in Los Angeles for the last three decades. It was close enough to the West Side and to Hollywood to make it possible to meet people there for lunch without driving all day. It was right next door to the Academy La Peer screening room where the VFX bake off was held and became the traditional meeting place for our VFX clan to meet before or after the screenings. I must have had 100 meetings at Kate's over the years, if not more. There was almost always legal parking on side streets if you knew where to look and if all else failed there was reasonably priced valet parking. You could tell someone to meet you at Kate Mantillini's later that night and know for certain that it would be open and that you would get a table.
But its gone.
I was able to pass
by Kate Mantillini's about two weeks before it was closed and managed
to take a few photographs and two (jerky) walkthrough's of the
restaurant. It seems silly, even to me, but I guess I am a sentimental guy.
In chatting with the employees there I learned that
Kate's was owned by the family who runs Hamburger Hamlet, and this
was, I guess, their more high-end, themed restaurant.
Many of the
employees I talked to had been there for years and were then thinking
about looking for new jobs in about two weeks when the restaurant
closed (about June 15).
If you listen to the
dialogue track at the end of the B walkthrough, you will hear me
talking to the manager of the restaurant who wanted to know what I
thought I was doing. I told him that I had been told that the
manager had approved it.... he replied that he was the manager.
Ooops.
I apologize for the jerkiness of the two walkthroughs below. It was all very ad hoc and spontaneous. I had my cheap digital camera with me and so I just held the camera about chest high, tried to be discreet, and walked purposefully towards the bathrooms thanking everyone I came across. You can see me in my dissolute and degenerate form reflected in the mirror at the end of take A. Yes, that is me whistling in the background, trying to be nonchalant.
I apologize for the jerkiness of the two walkthroughs below. It was all very ad hoc and spontaneous. I had my cheap digital camera with me and so I just held the camera about chest high, tried to be discreet, and walked purposefully towards the bathrooms thanking everyone I came across. You can see me in my dissolute and degenerate form reflected in the mirror at the end of take A. Yes, that is me whistling in the background, trying to be nonchalant.
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