\n\tDan Tana, the sometime actor and former maitre d\u2019 who opened the namesake Dan Tana\u2019s Restaurant in West Hollywood in 1964, has died. He was 90.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe eatery, which became a Los Angeles institution, hosting actors and various industry figures, announced Tana\u2019s death in a Facebook post on Saturday, saying that he had \u201cpassed on.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe all know that he created a very magical place,\u201d the statement, attributed to Dan Tana\u2019s staff<\/a>, said of the restaurant\u2019s former owner. \u201cOur beloved little yellow house will forever feel his presence.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTana took over the old Dominick\u2019s in West Hollywood in 1964, after working as a maitre d\u2019 at La Scala and Villa Capri, and saw a need for a place where stars could gather and dine late into the night (he kept the kitchen open until 12:30 a.m.).<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere was not a decent restaurant serving until 1 a.m. You had to go to a coffee shop,\u201d Tana said of the L.A. dining<\/a> scene at the time in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> in which he looked back at his eponymous eatery as it celebrated its 50th anniversary.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the Saturday Facebook post, Dan Tana\u2019s staff said that working for La Scala and Villa Capri inspired Tana to open his own place.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHe was always proud of where he came from and what he accomplished,\u201d the post continued, noting Tana\u2019s past as a former soccer star in Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n \n\tThe staff praised his \u201cwonderful stories\u201d about Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, James Dean, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis man is a legend, and as you know a legend never dies,\u201d the Facebook post concluded.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter rejecting offers from other prospective buyers, Tana sold the restaurant to current owner Sonja Perencevic in 2009 and moved to Belgrade, Serbia.<\/p>\n \n\tPerencevic promised to keep things as they\u2019d been, which Saturday\u2019s Facebook post indicated she\u2019d still done more than 15 years later, saying she \u201ckept it exactly the same since 1964.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSome of our patrons were skeptical,\u201d Perencevic told THR in 2014 and Tana himself said that same year that he was \u201chappy\u201d to discover \u201cnothing has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHollywood figures who frequented the restaurant include Cameron Diaz, Harry Dean Stanton, Rick Yorn, Nick Styne, Jerry West, Johnny Carson, Jack Nicholson and Dabney Coleman.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been coming here so long, it\u2019s part of my whole lifestyle,\u201d Stanton told THR in 2014.<\/p>\n \n\tDiaz had her first meal at Dan Tana\u2019s at the age of 16 and would regularly meet up with manager Yorn and Styne at the eatery.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was the first restaurant I ate in in Los Angeles. I\u2019m 42 now, and it has not changed,\u201d Diaz told THR in 2014. \u201cIt feels like you walked right into the moment it was conceived.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tStyne added, \u201cIt\u2019s very much like those New York Italian places where everybody is family.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Tana recalled in 2014 that Drew Barrymore\u2019s parents brought her to the restaurant and changed her diaper on the bar.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe are still serving my original customers \u2014 and their children and grandchildren,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Italian restaurant in West Hollywood, with its white shutters, red booths and Chianti bottles hanging from the ceiling, has just 17 tables and a menu that has barely changed but has seen items named after famous fans including Coleman\u2019s 18 oz. New York steak, veal parmigiana Jerry Weintraub, veal cutlet a la George Clooney and shrimp scampi for late Lakers owner Jerry Buss.<\/p>\n \n\tTana also served as the inspiration behind Robert Urich\u2019s Dan Tanna character on the 1978-1981 Aaron Spelling TV series Vega$.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Tana, the sometime actor and former maitre d\u2019 who opened the namesake Dan Tana\u2019s Restaurant in West…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":152166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[20947,171,593,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-152165","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-dining","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-obituaries","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115042057857909330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}