Hollywood Hangout Patrick’s Roadhouse Closing: Patrick Fischler on His Loss

Iconic Los Angeles waterfront restaurant Patrick’s Roadhouse on the edge of Pacific Palisades may have thrown out its last hash brown.

In the midst of a long-term lease negotiation and after financial hits from the pandemic, the half-century-old restaurant just off Pacific Coast Highway, known for its bright green exterior and kitschy decor , try to increase $250,000 for back rent and building improvements as she talks with potential new business partners about the possibility of a return.

Although off the radar of industry insiders in recent years, he has long been an unassuming lure for stars like Johnny Carson, Sean Penn and Lucille Ball as well as executives like Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Paramount chairman Pictures, Ned Tanen. Perhaps its most important connection to Hollywood, however, is its namesake: veteran actor Patrick Fischler, son of original owner Bill Fischler, who has since passed away.

Fischler, best known for playing insult comedian Jimmy Barrett in Mad Men, spent weekends there during his childhood, then waited tables when he was a teenager and again after college. “It’s a way of life,” he says, “and even after I became an actor, it followed me. I’ll be on set and people will approach me: Are you that Patrick from the Roadhouse? It’s like, Yeah! » He adds that it has been remarkable to see his family’s restaurant become the rarest local phenomenon, yet another moment in a changing world. “There aren’t many places that make you feel that way. We’re talking about Philippe and the Apple Pan. (For many, Fischler’s most indelible stage performance, as the doomed dreamer Dan in David Lynch’s classic Los Angeles. Mulholland Drivetook place at a retro dinner.)

The restaurant’s jarring appearance has become part of its unpretentious appeal. Its roofline features a miniature Statue of Liberty as well as statues of Sherlock Holmes and a Tyrannosaurus rex, while its interior is also eerie, a mix of seemingly random portraits and quirky memorabilia, like an ascot preserved under glass which would have been worn. by Clark Gable in Gone with the wind. “The atmosphere is like nothing else,” attested Jim Wiatt, then chairman and CEO of William Morris (predecessor of today’s WME), to Los Angeles Times in 2007.

The aesthetic was, Fischler explains, the result of Bill’s irrepressible eclecticism. “It was a nonstop antique store,” he says. “There was no rhyme or reason. If he liked something, he would buy it and just…