For Phil Rosenthal, there’s only one thing he loves more than food: his family. So, he mixed the two worlds for Max & Helen’s, a new diner he opened Tuesday with his daughter, Lily Rosenthal.
Working alongside famed chef Nancy Silverton and his new son-in-law, Mason Royal, the television writer and food enthusiast spends a great deal of his time on Larchmont Boulevard in Los Angeles. And he’s had a lease at 127 N. Larchmont for nearly 22 years.
“It was the right time years ago. It just takes years. The city is not easy. There’s a lot of bureaucracy,” Phil says during our interview at one of Silverton’s other restaurants in Hancock Park, Osteria Mozza. “We’ve had the lease since 2004. It takes months just to have them look at your plans, then they sometimes change their minds, depending on the person. It’s like dealing with the studios.”
But Max & Helen’s, aptly named after his late parents, whom audiences fell in love with on “Somebody Feed Phil,” won’t feel like Hollywood, and it won’t have the stuffy vibe so many L.A. restaurants seem to have today.
“There’s this thing happening where restaurants have an attitude like you, the guests, are so lucky we let you in here. I hate that. The best part of the dining experience should be the hospitality,” says Lily, who serves as the creative director of the diner. “You want to feel taken care of. We’re so lucky that you, the guest, are spending your money on us. That can be a really small detail, and it’s the attention to those details that really make you feel like we care about you.”
She also hired the staff, which has a heavy task: Help foster a community while serving delicious food.
“This is about the culture,” she adds. “We’re trying to create a culture within Larchmont of not just the food being great, but you feeling like you’re part of the community. That’s everything. So it takes a specific type of person to fill those roles.”
Phil Rosenthal is known in the food business already, thanks to the 49 episodes of “Somebody Feed Phil” — and the fact that he spends “every single day that I’m in town” walking around Larchmont and usually having coffee and breakfast at Go Get ‘Em Tiger. But through the years of visiting and eating at some of the best restaurants in the world, one place from Season 8 stood out: Biddeford’s famed Palace Diner Restaurant in Maine.
“That one that stuck with me. I think that’s a relatable thing — when we find the best version of something we loved our whole lives, you remember. It’s like ‘Ratatouille.’ You go back to your childhood and have the ideal version of that. It’s stronger than just the food itself,” he says. “The diner is the center of many communities. Rich, poor, everyone in between can appreciate the diner. They’re disappearing from America, and with that disappearance, maybe we lose our sense of community, and maybe with that, we lose the country. So we’re going to fix everything with our diner.”
He laughs but in a way, he’s serious. “Think globally, act locally. This is literally our neighborhood. For me, it’s a way to show love for our neighbors. It’s my hangout now — it’s like I planned my retirement.”
Larchmont isn’t exactly cheap — in fact, it’s pretty pricey. But, Phil and Lily promise, this will be high quality without the crazy price tag. “It’s going to be as cheap as we can possibly make it. I don’t do things for money, I never did,” he says. “It’s very important to me that it remains democratic with a small fee that almost everyone can afford to eat here. I promise you we’ll have the cheapest coffee on the block.”
The menu will include drip coffee (but no espresso machine, so don’t expect a latte), two different types of grilled cheese, an omelette of the day, and a plethora of desserts — milkshakes, banana splits and hot fudge sundaes, etc. Plus, Max’s fluffy eggs and Helen’s matzo ball soup will be listed to honor his parents. There will also be a smoked salmon platter with a sesame bagel from Phil’s favorite bagel spot — yes, even as a New Yorker — Courage Bagels.
“That was no small feat,” he says of the collaboration with Courage. At first they said no, but he countered. “I said, ‘How about, give us one bagel. We won’t do anything to it other than heat it up. We’re not even going to make the sandwich — the platter will come separately. They said, ‘You can have the sesame bagel.’ I said, ‘That’s the best one!’”
Not everyone always agreed on the menu, though — and one item he debated with Silverton over. The acclaimed chef didn’t think a burger was necessary since she makes a patty melt. He pushed back. “It was a big point of contention,” Lily laughs.
“I said, ‘It’s a diner. We’ve got to have a burger.’ To her point, everyone else has burgers. We went back and forth, and she said, ‘Taste the patty melt.’ I tasted it. The best patty melt I’ve ever had in my life,” recalls Phil. “As soon as I swallowed, I said, ‘We still need a burger.’ My other argument is that she happens to make the best burger I’ve ever had.”
So, there’s also a hamburger, a hot dog and Max & Helen’s Not for Me Hot Sauce on the menu, the latter of which Lily says, is “for both people who love spice and are a little wary.”
Lily Rosenthal and husband Mason Royal
For Lily, working on the diner has been the first time she’s dipped her toe into the restaurant world — and she is learning everything she possibly can.
“I would just go to the places Dad would bring me. But now I’m married to a chef, and he’s running operations on this, and I have been able to take a front seat and learn the ins and outs of the process itself — how much work and dedication it takes from the back to what we see when we go out to eat. This is all I want to do now: open restaurants,” she says.
Now, she dreams of opening other restaurants. To this, her dad chimes in: “I’d like to be a VIP.”
And yes, they’re already thinking ahead, hopeful that maybe they could open another Max & Helen’s in New York — eventually.
“We would love if this could build into becoming a big, national diner chain. That would be great. But for right now, we have to focus on getting this 100% right, because the worst thing you could do is go too big too soon,” says Lily. “So the priority is making sure this is perfect.
One more, and then see how that goes, Phil adds. “The quality of this has to stay. I’ve seen it happen with restaurants that I’ve invested in that started to spread themselves too thin. The first thing that happens is the quality goes down. I got offers when we were making ‘Raymond,’ ‘Hey, do you want to create another show?’ ‘No, I really don’t. I’m writing this show. This is important, this one. Let’s make this one good, and then later we can talk.’”
Don’t expect to see Max & Helen’s on “Somebody Feed Phil” — even though, I tell him, the title “Phil Feeds Somebody” writes itself. But, he would like to have it featured in a different show.
“What I would be open to is a documentary series about the diner — just a four-to-six episode thing about the making of our diner, while exploring the great diners of America and exploring this idea of community,” he says. “It’s about something larger than just about the food.”
Max and Helen’s Diner is now open at 127 N. Larchmont Blvd. in Los Angeles.
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