I enjoy Steve Martin. I like that he's had white hair for as long as I can remember, and that he's hosted SNL a bajillion times but was never a cast member, and that his last movie was a rom com where he smoked pot and made out with Meryl Streep. However, my favorite thing about Steve Martin is that he wrote "Shopgirl," a novella about a mousy young lady named Mirabelle who falls for a smooth, rich older man, and then cast himself as the smooth, rich older man in the movie adaptation. (Boy was he smooth though, guys. He bought gloves from her and then secretly sent them to her as a gift!) Jason Schwartzman was also in the movie, which is notable only because everything Jason Schwartzman-related is notable.
Mirabelle the restaurant is totally the kind of place that Mirabelle the character would dine at with smooth, rich older men. It's managed to retained its stuffy fancypants-ness in a hip part of the Sunset Strip. Since I was there for lunch with my coworkers, I ordered a turkey burger with fries. The turkey part was kind of dry, but that's how turkeys are designed and that's how I like my burgers. That way it doesn't get soggy when I eat the other half for dinner as a side dish to my three mini dinner cupcakes. If I was there with a rich, older Steve Martin-type of man I probably would order something classier, like white wine and a complex salad. The restaurant is also nice for this sort of situation because it's kind of sunken in below the level of the sidewalk, so you feel like a sort of mole creature peering up, and it's good for discrete situations in case your friends walk by and you don't want them to see that you're out with a man old enough to be your father, or an ex-con, etc.
more