Canter’s Restaurant, Hollywood, California
Canter’s is undoubtedly one of my favorite restaurants. It has been around for ninety some years. The stylish ‘50s decor is the exact same decor they had in the stylish 50s. What other restaurant can you go to at three in the morning and get the best potato knish in the universe? Or slink in at 9:47 AM with the worst hangover in the known world and have a waitress with a pot of coffee and a soft voice glance down at you and say, “What can I getcha hun?” with the same tone of concern as your favorite aunt. “Do you have chicken soup yet this morning?”
You can order a martini with your Corn Beef Reuben or nurse two fingers of your favorite bourbon in the Kibitz Room. My all-time favorite is a turkey on rye––they have the best rye––and a knish. How pastry-wrapped potatoes can taste so good is beyond all reason. All delis have a similar smell, slightly different but similar; maybe it’s from the dill pickles, I don’t know, but it creates a kind of spinning, wild, madness of desire. Where we live now, there are no delis. Non. Nota. And I’m suffering. It must be a condition of some kind, a “Deli Deficiency Disorder,” and I’ve got it. Yeah, a severe case of DDD.