My Usual Table by Colman Andrews

Author:Colman Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

PORTS HAD ITS ORIGINS in another restaurant, the Studio Grill, three blocks west along Santa Monica Boulevard. The Grill was opened in 1970 by Jock and his friend Ardison Phillips, an artist. Neither had any previous restaurant experience, but they’d been neighbors in Hollywood and used to cook for large groups extemporaneously, and they thought they could make a go of a modest bistro serving the kind of food they liked to prepare and eat themselves. They made a sort of Odd Couple. Ardison was punctilious and chipper, and liked to wear ascots. Jock was more nonchalant and sometimes sulky, and used to greet guests at the restaurant garbed in a long white lab coat, which made him seem at once authoritative and vaguely sinister.

The Grill had an appealingly casual, bohemian feeling to it, and it quickly gained a local following. Lois Dwan summed the place up pretty well in the Los Angeles Times when she called it “Greenwich Village in Hollywood” and hailed its “fearless menu that ranges from caviar aspic to zarzuela.” The Grill was only a few blocks from my apartment on Fountain Avenue, and I thought the place looked interesting from the outside, so stopped in one night shortly after it opened. I was intrigued by the large lab-coated man who seemed to be in charge, and I liked the eclectic menu—I think I probably had the roasted red peppers with anchovies followed by that zarzuela, a seafood stew that Jock had learned to make in Spain. I soon became a regular, and started getting to know Jock, often over two or three shared bottles of good Rioja after dinner.

It turned out that running a business together emphasized the considerable differences in temperament between Jock and Ardison, and they began disagreeing about everything from the menu to the air-conditioning. Eventually they cut a deal to manage the restaurant on alternate days, and regulars would often make it a point to show up only on Jock’s night, or Ardison’s, depending on where their loyalties resided. The arrangement didn’t last for long. Micaela once told me, “On ‘his’ days, Ardison would not let me in while I waited for the butcher [next door] to prepare my meat for the empanadas I used to make at home for the restaurant. One fine evening, I put on an evening dress, walked into the Studio Grill, and threw a brandy cream pie at him, managing to hit his shoulder. After that I always walked on the other side of the street and never spoke to him again. Shortly after, we moved down the street to open Ports.”

Ports got its name for purely practical reasons. The space had housed a bar called Sports Inn. When the Livingstons took over the lease, in late 1971, Jock climbed up on a ladder (which must have been a sight) and pulled down the “S” and the “Inn”—and Ports was christened. It opened for business in February of the following year.

Micaela was an artist—her painted furniture

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