Dinner and a Show : With Rock ‘n’ Roll, Movie Memorabilia and Soon, TV, Celebrity-Powered Restaurants Have Turned Eating Out From a Simple Pleasure Into an Event

On a chilly Saturday night in Beverly Hills, a bustling crowd forms on a normally desolate stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. Is a film being shot? Is this spillover from a charity bash? Nope. It’s the line outside of months-old Planet Hollywood.

The commotion attests to the unflagging popularity of restaurants that rake in millions of dollars by serving up “Star Wars” costumes along with hamburgers or Jimi Hendrix guitars with hot fudge sundaes. There’s hardly a metropolis in the country that doesn’t have at least one Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe, Dive!, House of Blues, Motown Cafe, Fashion Cafe, Harley-Davidson Cafe or Country Star.

Since the first of these “eatertainment” establishments opened more than two decades ago, the theme genre has proliferated around the globe with the support of celebrity backers. It has such staying power that even TV’s favorite lifeguard, David Hasselhoff, is contemplating jumping in with a new restaurant called Baywatchers.

Dining out used to be so simple: a menu, some food and drink, conversation, a bill. Now, along with the food--usually moderately priced burgers, sandwiches, pizzas--we’ve come to expect a multimedia spectacle. Music is loud enough to wreak havoc on conversations, walls are adorned with memorabilia, video or live performances are often incorporated, and there’s lots of stuff (T-shirts, key chains, mugs) for sale. During peak hours, getting a table can take an hour or more.

“I honestly don’t mind,” says Amani White, a 20-year-old sales associate from Pacoima. Out with friends last weekend for a first-time visit to Planet Hollywood Beverly Hills, she was at the beginning of what proved to be an hour-and-40-minute wait. “I have a lot of patience, so I just go with the flow.”

Nicole Richards, a 21-year-old Sylmar preschool teacher, says the restaurant appealed to her because “It’s different. There’s scenery and ambience to it.” Adds her friend Marisa Field, a 21-year-old Sylmar bookkeeper, “When you see pictures of some of the stars you say, ‘Oh, remember this movie and remember that movie and when we went to see it together?’ You just kind of [recall] everything.”

Americans have always liked unconventional dining experiences. During the ‘70s, the staff of the Great American Food & Beverage Co. served up live performances between kitchen runs. Victoria Station was designed to look like a vintage train, and at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, waiters in straw boaters rang bells and beat drums each time a customer ordered some oversized, gooey dessert.

We’ve suffered through food crazes, too, from precious portions of nouvelle cuisine to blackened everything, mile-long salad bars and raw fish. But the latest rage has less to do with food and more with giving diners an event along with their meal.

The theories behind this movement are as numerous as the permutations of restaurants: We live computer-driven, 3-D lives. Family meals are fragmented and no one sits down together at the table anymore. People love feeling connected to celebrities. The world is becoming one big theme park.

“Entertainment is becoming so much a part of our culture that we like to be entertained while we’re eating,” says Tridib Banerjee, a USC professor of urban and regional planning. “If you look at who these places draw, it’s mainly younger people who have grown up with rock music and Nintendo. They all probably have computers at home and cruise the Internet. I have teenage kids, and the things teens suffer from is getting bored. These places are guaranteeing that they’ll not be bored before their hamburger arrives.”

Our appetite for Hollywood seems insatiable, Banerjee adds.

“You watch ‘Indiana Jones’ and then go to Disneyland to actually experience it. These new developments are [adding] an entertainment aspect to increase the level of stimulation. Anything that has a high-tech potential is obviously going to flourish.”

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New York City, already home to at least half a dozen theme eateries including the Fashion Cafe, Harley-Davidson Cafe and Motown Cafe, will get another next summer: Television City, courtesy of veteran restaurateurs David and Bill Liederman.

Video monitors at each table will allow diners to order food, play games, buy merchandise and cast their votes in opinion polls. An actual television studio built into the restaurant will give customers a chance to act on a TV show.

Among the celebrity investors are actors Michael Tucker and wife Jill Eikenberry, old friends of the Liederman brothers. Tucker, an avowed foodie whose soon-to-be-published autobiography is titled “I Never Forget a Meal,” admits that Television City won’t be a “food restaurant.

“I like a good burger every now and then,” he says by phone from his San Francisco home, “and I feel safe in saying that the burger you’ll get at Television City is going to be a damn good burger. But a food restaurant is a place where there’s really incredible things done brilliantly so that you’re delighted when it comes to the table.”

He predicts that the perennial popularity of TV and TV stars will be the main draw.

“I think [the success of theme restaurants] has to do with the kind of mania for celebrity that there is in this country. If you’re sitting there looking up at Buddy Holly’s guitar, it makes you feel good. If celebrities are involved in it as investors and you go to that restaurant, you’re a buddy.”

Peter Morton, co-founder of the rock ‘n’ roll-themed Hard Rock Cafe, sits on an empire of 15 restaurants and one Las Vegas hotel. He doesn’t buy the theory that diners nowadays must be bombarded with music and images.

“In the last few weeks I’ve been to some of the best Italian restaurants in the country, but [there’s not] any of that,” he says from his airy L.A. headquarters. “When we did the Hard Rock we weren’t saying, ‘Let’s bombard them with music.’ We wanted to make a real statement about America and music. It was, ‘Let’s let them have a good time while they’re eating dinner, let’s make it fun for them.’ ”

Morton chalks up the trend to normal industry evolution.

“We’ve exhausted every other idea,” he says. “It’s like the resurgence of steakhouses. Or like movies. A certain type of film is made and all of a sudden everyone puts out that type of movie.”

At the ripe old age of 24, the Hard Rock is considered the granddaddy of the most recent wave of theme establishments. Morton and then-partner Isaac Tigrett (who since started House of Blues) opened their first location in London in 1971, bringing American roadside diner food and rock ‘n’ roll in an idealized American setting across the pond.

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Morton fully expected clones to show up. In time, the Hard Rock begat Planet Hollywood, backed by principal shareholders Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. Producer Keith Barish is chairman and Robert Earl, a former Hard Rock employee, is president and CEO. Earl, who declined to be interviewed for this story, will open the sports-themed All Star Cafe in New York’s Times Square this month and has plans for a restaurant dedicated to Marvel Comics.

With 29 sites here and abroad and more on the way, a Planet Hollywood opening is a media event unto itself, making advertising a waste of money. Premieres provide sound bites and photo opportunities for the always-hungry tabloid TV shows and celebrity magazines. Planet Hollywood even had its own network television special. When the Beverly Hills branch debuted, Rodeo Drive closed down for a huge block party complete with performances from Elton John, Chuck Berry and Willis.

Soon, entrepreneurs with ideas for theme tie-ins were building their own restaurants, most in cities with steady tourist traffic such as Orlando, Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas. One of the more recent knockoffs is the 525-seat Country Star, which opened at Universal CityWalk last year. Its investors include Reba McEntire, Vince Gill and Wynonna.

Patrons are inundated with country music from the minute they walk through the huge faux jukebox entryway. Inside are more than 110 video monitors, some even mounted in the bathrooms. Interactive video kiosks let diners get up close and personal with the singers, and there is the requisite gift shop. Food has a down-home Southern slant, with barbecue wood flown in from the Carolinas.

Country Star’s success, says president Peter Feinstein, can be chalked up to the fact that “other theme restaurants aren’t necessarily based on a lifestyle. Dive! is a great concept, but if you eat at Dive! what does that mean? That you like having a good meal in a submarine? If you eat at Country Star, it really signifies something [more than] a good meal--you were able to touch into a lifestyle.”

Milford Prewitt, senior editor of the trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News, gets at least one press release a month heralding yet another theme restaurant opening. The latest industry whispers involve football and hip-hop.

“There are a number of reasons why people eat out,” he explains, “and combining food with entertainment is just one of many. Two bankers financing a big deal will hardly be found at the Hard Rock. But for families, active singles and couples, these complexes are filling a niche, and it’s a niche that has a long way to go before it’s saturated.”

That seems to be the consensus among industry insiders. Tom Kelly, an associate professor of restaurant management at Cornell University’s school of hotel administration, believes the trend may eventually top out.

“It could happen if you don’t make the concept change with the tastes. . . . It’s not so much cyclical as it is [based on] human behavior.”

Kelly points to one national chain that during the ‘60s was one of the American family’s favorite dining spots, but quickly fell out of favor when it failed to keep up with the demand for healthy foods.

“Is fine dining dead?” he asks. “It will probably return, as the baby boomers who are now paying for their kids’ tuition and braces will eventually have more disposable income.”

Adds USC’s Banerjee: “The reason these things are happening and successful is that people like them. The technological advances are happening so fast and there are so many different possibilities that I think it’s going to happen more and more.”