Dan Tanas: West Hollywood Timeless Italian Experience

My All-Time Favorites

I thought I would write about some of my all-time favorites such as a restaurant, song, movie and TV show. Everyone has a favorite and I will share mine. This article will be about my favorite restaurant.

Opening screen shot of Dan Tana's website

Dan Tanas West Hollywood

Hands down my favorite restaurant is Dan Tanas West Hollywood. Located in West Hollywood this little Italian restaurant is known for its great food and frequent celebrity customers. It was established in the 1930's and has been a Hollywood staple for almost 100 years.

I live in Orange County, California and a trip to Los Angeles is 100 miles and takes about 2 1/2 to 3 hours depending on traffic, but Dan Tana's is worth the trip.

As I mentioned in previous articles my company MarketSource was a leader in college marketing bringing household name brands such as Kellogg's, Apple, Colgate toothpaste, etc. onto large college campuses through signage, events, and sampling. We did very well in virtually all brand categories except one, the movies. The reason was one fantastic salesperson named Gene who worked for a competitor, U Magazine. His office wasn't in some LA office building... His office was a corner table in Dan Tana's restaurant where he did all his business.

If you missed Tony's other recent posts, you can find them here at Papa's Corner.

My business partner Marty Levine, whom I had written about in previous articles said to me "Tony, meet up with this guy Gene who works for U Magazine and gets a ton of movie ads every issue. See what it would take to get him to work for MarketSource."

So I call Gene and I introduced myself over the phone and requested a meeting. Gene said to meet him at Dan Tana's at 6 PM where he conducted all his business.

I enter Dan Tana's and I am greeted by the maître d', a tall good-looking guy named Craig (more about Craig later). Craig escorts me to Gene's booth. I notice that the man in the booth to Gene's left is Jerry Buss who owns the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. Then I look to Gene's left, and I see Sumner Redstone who is a billionaire who owns Viacom (CBS, MTV). Gene is standing at his booth talking to Gary Marshall, creator of "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley". Gene introduces me to Gary who smiles and leaves to go to the bar area. I said Gene I am impressed. He just smiles and calls for his favorite waiter Arturo to get us some drinks. Gene then waves to George Clooney who is walking to his table.

A celebration for the movie, Kramer vs. Kramer for the Gene, third from left, from his days at Columbia Pictures, with the actor, Dustin Hoffman, 4th from right. Dustin won Best Actor for the movie. The person on the far left was Stanley Jaffe, Gene's brother-in-law, who produced the movie.

Clooney comes over and says to me "Hi I'm George," I said "Nice to meet you, George." Then he kiddingly says, "I judge people by who they associate with, but I'll make an exception in your case." We all laugh and he departs. I ask Gene how often he is at Dan Tana's and he says Monday through Friday, 6 to 10 PM, at this booth every night but weekends. I come to find out that Gene is from Rye, New York and married a young lady named Marsha for 30 years and has a son and daughter. I asked Gene what brought him to California and he said, "I got a job with Columbia Pictures where my father-in-law Leo was CEO for many years." He also said his brother-in-law Stanley was CEO of Paramount Pictures for many years and won an Academy Award as producer of "Kramer vs. Kramer". I'm thinking, this Gene fellow is more connected than I could have ever imagined.

Gene asks about me and I tell him the MarketSource story and how great it would be to have him on our team.

Gene says, "I'm interested but it would have to be for substantially more than I make at U Magazine." He said, "Before we talk business lets enjoy a nice dinner and get to know each other."

I said, "Gene since you eat here practically every day, what do you recommend." Gene said, "The New York steak is great, as are the New Zealand lamb chops, white fish, spaghetti and meatballs and his favorite chicken parmesan."

Notes from my dad's story

I order the shrimp cocktail as an appetizer, lamb chops entre and NY cheesecake for dessert. Gene ordered the calamari, white fish and spumoni. I'm thinking this is the best dinner I ever had, no wonder the place is so popular. The chef comes out and asks how it was, Gene and I say terrific. Gene hands him a $20 and he smiles and goes back to the kitchen. Craig the maître d' comes over and asks if we need anything and we say no, everything was great. Gene hands Craig a $20 and he heads for another table. Then Arturo comes to the table and Gene hands him $60. The bus boy cleaning the table is handed $10. I'm thinking the dinner was $200 and the tips $110 or a total of $310 times 5 nights a week is about $1,500 a week times 52 weeks comes to about $75,000 a year.

Then Gene tells me he has a top-of-the-line BMW as his company car and limo service if he doesn't feel like driving to Dan Tana's.

So now I get into salary, commission on sales and bonuses. Gene says he delivers 7 to 8 million a year in movie advertisements to U Magazine. His base salary is $200,000 and his commissions are 10% or about 750,000, so when you add up salary, commissions and expense account, Gene is pulling in about $1,100,000 a year, not bad in 1994. No wonder he has a constant smile on his face.

I leave Dan Tana's telling Gene I would discuss everything with Marty Levine.

I call Marty and tell him that every night Gene is sitting at Dan Tana's entertaining executives from Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate and MGM. He comes with a contract and after dinner he gets them to sign. He loves them and they love Gene and Dan Tana's. There is no way MarketSource could break that bond.

Then Marty asks how much Gene is making and there is stone silence. I'm not sure if the phone has a bad connection or Marty has passed out.

This posed quite a dilemma for MarketSource. Gene could give us a major brand category we couldn't touch. It would increase the value of the company and make us more attractive to potential buyers and to investment banks considering us for an IPO. However, on the flip side the compensation imbalance between Gene and our 50 advertising sales reps would be of such significance to cause morale problems, requests for higher salaries and commissions on sales and company cars.

The cons were more than the pros. MarketSource had prided itself on a culture of family and it resulted in significant annual growth and very low turnover. Hiring Gene would risk jeopardizing the culture of the company despite the attractiveness of the entertainment industry.

Marty and I made that decision and let it stay in silence since there was no need to rattle any cages.

It was a great meeting with Gene, a great dinner at Dan Tana's and fun meeting celebrities. So I called Gene and said how great it was to meet this legendary salesperson and we considered making him an offer, but we decided not to because of the factors enumerated. I thanked him and he said maybe we could get together again at Dan Tana's but the next time just as friends. I said I look forward to it.

Well, since that sunny day in 1994 Gene and I have had at least 200 dinners at Dan Tana's and although Gene no longer lives in California, we speak every Monday morning from 7 AM to 8 AM. We talk about sports, politics, business happenings and family.

Ironically back in 2003 when Alloy Entertainment purchased MarketSource, Gene was working for Alloy and knocking it out of the park even though he was in his 70's. I became a member of Alloy's board of directors and got involved in the entertainment industry as Alloy produced very popular teen and young adult television shows such as "Gossip Girl", "Vampire Diaries" and "Pretty Little Liars". Alloy has since been sold to Warner Brothers.

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned the maître d' at Dan Tana's, Craig Susser. Well Craig opened Craig's Restaurant in 2011, and it has become the most popular restaurant in Los Angeles, even more popular than Dan Tana's.

My next article will be about my favorite song.