Encyclopedia Bartannica

Make no mistake--Nancy Rommelmann loves bars. Several years back, the former nightlife columnist for Buzz and Los Angeles magazines was kicking it with her boyfriend at a favorite L.A. watering hole (Ye Rustic Inn in Los Feliz). Rommelmann said, “You know, I should just self-publish a book on L.A. nightlife.” The two sat there for a moment contemplating the idea. “We were like, yeah, right,” laughs Rommelmann. But rather than let the concept go the way of so many late-night epiphanies, she approached an agent, who snapped up the idea and found her a publisher.

“Rommelmann’s Los Angeles Bar and Nightlife Guide,” issued this spring by L.A. Weekly Books for St. Martin’s Press, is vintage Rommelmann. This is, after all, the writer who once titled a withering review of a Hollywood watering hole “The Garden of Eden Proves There Is No God.” A smart, often laugh-out-loud collection of vignettes that reads more like flash fiction than Zagat, the new compendium is laced with wry observations reminiscent of Joseph Mitchell’s “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.” The guide covers bars, clubs and late-night dining, with cross-indexing for location, type of music offered, type of scene and other categories. Whether describing B.B. King’s Blues Club “located in the fetid candy-land that is CityWalk,” or the surreal decor of the Lava Lounge in Hollywood (“think: Tim Burton does Don Ho”), Rommelmann is one explorer who likes to bend an elbow with the regulars and dig up stories.

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TASTY BITES:

MUSSO & FRANK GRILL (6667 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood): “Hollywood’s oldest restaurant (open since 1919) is as big as a ship’s ballroom, with 50-foot-high ceilings, tuxedoed career waiters who brook no indecision . . . and a crowd that defies categorization.”

CASA VEGA (13301 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks): “From 2:30-5:30, you will find carpenters from the studios, older Valley matrons in white gloves, party kids from over the hill and harried moms with kids in tow all swilling strong margaritas in a room redder than a busted capillary.”

FORMOSA CAFE (7156 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood): “In 1991, when Warner Bros. Hollywood threatened to raze this restaurant and bar in a railcar, generations of tipplers put down their drinks and raised their fists in protest, and the Formosa remained standing.”

PACIFIC DINING CAR (downtown): “A plush, expanded steakhouse in a railway car, opened in 1921, PDC is the place to devour beef with the wanton abandon of a turn-of-the-century robber baron.”