Los Angeles is often described as a city that does not value its past. Every day, it seems, some historic home, building or restaurant is newly facing the wrecking ball. That is especially true of the latter, though several key eateries have managed to weather the test of time. Hollywood’s iconic Musso and Frank Grill has been shaking up martinis for over 100 years now. Bay Cities Italian Deli is still slinging sandwiches in Santa Monica over nine decades after its inception. And Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant has been a San Fernando Valley staple pretty much from the day it first opened way back in 1945.
Situated on a busy corner of Valley Glen, Barone’s is an undeniable oldie but goodie and location managers have certainly recognized it as such, cementing its status as a go-to for any L.A.-based film or television show in need of a retro establishment. The place is such an industry stalwart, in fact, that it has prominently figured into the background of two recent productions set in the Los Angeles of yesteryear.
Not only does the restaurant pop up numerous times throughout Hulu’s 1990s-set “Pam & Tommy,” but it also appears in the new HBO series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” which takes place during the so-called Showtime era of basketball. (While countless websites claim that Barone’s also stands in for Tail o’ the Cock in the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film, “Licorice Pizza,” that is incorrect. The movie instead made use of the now-defunct, though still intact Billingsley’s Prime Rib and Steak House located at the Van Nuys Golf Course.)
A veritable Valley institution, Barone’s was founded by siblings Josephine Barone and Tony, Frank and Mike Arpaia, who initially set up shop in a small corner spot in Sherman Oaks that had previously housed an eatery named Barto’s. As a cost-saving measure, the foursome decided to dub their new venture “Barone’s,” as it allowed them to easily change up the old Barto’s signage by dropping the “T” and swapping in an “N” and an “E.” And thus, Barone’s Famous Italian Restaurant was born.
The rectangular-shaped Neapolitan-style pizzas for which the eatery is now known were also born out of a cost-efficiency measure. Fashioning the crust into a four-sided shape rather than a typical circle permitted the family to fit more pizzas into their tiny oven and therefore serve more pies to more customers.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Barone’s was a hit straight out of the gate. Just four years after opening, Josephine and her brothers found themselves in need of more space and moved to a larger spot about a block away, where the restaurant remained until 2006. At that point, it was relocated once again to its current home, a Tudor-esque structure at 13726 Oxnard St. that had originally housed a German eatery named Hoppe’s Old Heidelberg. Founded by pastry chef Hans Hoppe in 1958, the site served up traditional fare such as schnitzel and strudel in a kitschy environment that had Colman Andrews of the Los Angeles Times reporting in 1984, “The restaurant is a huge, sprawling place, with the inevitable red booths and costumed waitresses. Families seem to love it for its casual comfort and, of course, its reasonably priced abundance. There is, I regret to state, roving accordion music.”
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Switzerland-born cook Ueli Huegli took over the Hoppe’s space in 1996, rebranding it as Matterhorn Chef. Though the menu was reimagined with a Swiss flair and Heugli’s native flags were strung throughout the interior, little else was changed. When Barone’s moved in a decade later, the décor was left largely intact once again, minus the flags.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake It is thanks to that genuine historical ambiance that the restaurant, which is still owned and operated by the Arpaia and Barone families today, has become such a big and small screen favorite. Outfitted with glossy wood paneling, tufted red leather booths, colorful stained glass windows and beamed ceilings, the place is authentically vintage in all the right ways – and perfectly encapsulates past eras onscreen. One quick pan of its classic dining room or dimly-lit bar and viewers are instantly transported back in time.
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake As such, Barone’s was recently tapped to appear in “Pam & Tommy,” which hit Hulu in early February. The eatery plays itself on the series, popping up several times as the regular hangout of porn producer and notorious moneyman Louis “Butchie” Peraino (Andrew Dice Clay).
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake The site actually pulls double duty on the show. It also masquerades as Toni’s American Bistro, where Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) takes his ex-wife, Erica (Taylor Schilling), on a date in the third episode, titled “Jane Fonda.”
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Image Credit: HBO And in “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” which debuted last month, Barone’s was pegged to portray the now-defunct West Hollywood eatery Chasen’s. It is there that newly-minted Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C. Reilly) takes his rival, Boston Celtics head Red Auerbach (Michael Chiklis), for a rather contentious meal in episode two, titled “Is That All There Is?”
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake But the restaurant’s onscreen history far predates those recent shows. Back in 1982, the eatery famously appeared as the spot where a wallet-less Mark “Rat” Ratner (Brian Backer) took Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) for dinner in the classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” At the time of the filming, the place was still operating as Hoppe’s Old Heidelberg, but thanks to the fact that the interior has been left untouched throughout the restaurant’s many incarnations, it is still entirely recognizable as Rat and Stacy’s date site all these years later.
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Image Credit: CBS Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) also dined there with some friends while supposedly visiting Denver in the season three episode of “Murder She Wrote” titled “The Bottom Line is Murder,” which aired in 1987.
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Image Credit: Paramount Pictures Studios Back when it was operating as Matterhorn Chef, exterminator-turned-Little-League-coach Morris Buttermaker (Billy Bob Thornton) headed to the eatery with his date Paradise (Nectar Rose) in the 2005 comedy “Bad News Bears.”
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Image Credit: NBC Barone’s masqueraded as the supposed Scranton, Pennsylvania-area Louie Volpe’s Italian Restaurant, where the annual Dundies Awards were held, in the season seven episode of “The Office” titled “Michael’s Last Dundies.” Only the exterior appeared onscreen, though. Interiors were filmed on a studio-built set.
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Image Credit: ABC Barone’s appeared as Cattleman’s Ranch Steakhouse, the restaurant run by Louis Huang (Randall Park) and his family, in the “Fresh Off the Boat” pilot. Following that episode, a set slightly modeled after the eatery was utilized for all interior filming. (Exteriors were shot at Max’s of Manila located at 313 W. Broadway in Glendale.)
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Image Credit: Food Network Guy Fieri also visited Barone’s and cooked up some of the place’s famous rectangular pizza and cheese lasagna for the season 25 episode of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” titled “Global Greats.”