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For nearly 20 years, the restaurant served dishes named after Joan Collins, Jerry Weintraub to other Hollywood notables.
By Jensen Davis.
Liza Minnelli is almost never seen in public anymore. But in late March, paparazzi waited in the bougainvillea on Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood to catch the actress—wearing all black and diamonds—leaving one of the few restaurants that could coax her outside: Il Piccolino.
Unlike its flashier Los Angeles neighbors, such as Craig’s, Cecconi’s, or the Ivy, Il Piccolino was homey. It was elegant—white tablecloths, a single red rose on each table—but comfortable too. This month, after preparing lobster linguine, Dame Joan’s Broccoli (named after Joan Collins), and Artichoke “Robert Day” (after the British filmmaker) for Hollywood heavyweights for nearly two decades, the restaurant closed. It leaves behind many devotees, from Anjelica Huston to Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch to Irwin Winkler.
Il Piccolino owners Silvio De Mori and Eddie Kerkhofs.
“I dined at Il Piccolino just a few weeks ago with Dame Joan Collins, and we had such a fabulous night, as I’ve always done there,” says Piers Morgan. “Frank Sinatra’s daughter … was at the next table, so we had a gossip with her, and, like always, it felt like we were at the gastronomic epicenter of old-school Hollywood starry glamour, with a dash of youthful zest.”
The only other patron who made it onto the menu was the late producer Jerry Weintraub, the force behind films such as Nashville, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Ocean’s Eleven. The Weintraub Clam Spaghetti was cooked with generous amounts of white wine and garlic. Il Piccolino “was absolutely his go-to place for long, leisurely lunches with friends, family, and associates,” says Weintraub’s son, Michael. “The food couldn’t be beat, the wine was always flowing, and the atmosphere was like being in a comfortable living room.”
Jennifer Aniston and Joan Collins were among the restaurant’s starry regulars.
Il Piccolino as we know it opened in 2005, when two L.A. restaurateurs, Silvio De Mori and Eddie Kerkhofs, managed to convince its previous owner to fork over the not-for-sale place. Before Il Piccolino, De Mori—who “has had more restaurants than Elizabeth Taylor has had husbands,” as the Los Angeles Times once put it—had opened several Italian places around Beverly Hills. (In the late 1980s, Billy Wilder handed him an envelope with $20,000 in cash to open one.) Kerkhofs was known until then for Le Dome, a French restaurant on Sunset Boulevard he opened with Elton John in 1977.
For Il Piccolino, De Mori tweaked the existing Italian menu, adding dishes such as bottarga linguine, steak Florentine, and lemon-sage-and-tomato granita, which used lemons from his garden. Kerkhofs handled the wine list. “If [customers] can afford it, they love it,” he once told a reporter.
De Mori’s wife, Lidia, redecorated, adding burgundy-and-cream-striped banquettes, and Modigliani-inspired portraits to the walls, and unfurled a red carpet from the restaurant’s front door down the sidewalk. The patrons were used to those.
“I first went to Il Piccolino for lunch on the day it opened and sat in the corner, at table No. 1, where I always sat on average once a month until two days before it closed,” says David Niven Jr., the producer, writer, and former studio executive. “[De Mori] and [Kerkhofs] were always charming hosts with adorable wives and equally fun-loving dogs.”
Los Angeles is crowded with restaurants where people go to be seen. That wasn’t the case with Il Piccolino. “You could always count on seeing many friends in the room, enjoying a spectacular meal without any of Hollywood’s pretense,” says Broadway producer Douglas Denoff. “Silvio and Eddie and their staff created a living room of warmth centered on great food and wine … and friendship.”
“The ambiance was like a private club,” says Sherry Lansing, the actress turned C.E.O. of Paramount. She dined at Il Piccolino regularly with her husband, William Friedkin—the director behind The Exorcist, The French Connection, and To Live and Die in L.A., among many other films—always ordering the crudités and the Dover sole. “Over the years, you almost knew everyone at every table. It was relaxed and elegant at the same time … a perfect dining experience.”
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| The dining room at Il Piccolino, decorated by De Mori’s wife, Lidia. |
The couple was “bereft” when they heard it closed. (The owners couldn’t be reached for comment, but the rumor around West Hollywood is that jacked-up rent prices forced the closure.) “We don’t know where we are going to eat,” Lansing says.
Il Piccolino was conveniently located just two blocks away from Cedars-Sinai, the go-to hospital for the Who’s Who of Hollywood. “I remember picking up a to-go order for my dad when he was at Cedars, and chatting with [comedian] Louie Anderson, who sweetly sent get-well wishes,” says Cameron Silver, the fashion director of H by Halston and owner of the vintage shop Decades.
What the Il Piccolino regulars will miss the most is De Mori and Kerkhofs’s hospitality. “You couldn’t find two more handsome, charming, lovely people in the world,” says Cornelia Guest. “The waiters, the chefs, the valet guys—everyone was wonderful.”
“Eddie once made me try a dish he’d created with Elton John, which turned out to be a large bowl of pasta laden with Russian caviar and vodka that he called Fettuccine Moscow,” Morgan says. “I’ve never eaten a richer, more alcoholic (or delicious) dish. I’ll miss Il Piccolino enormously.”
You can read some of the interview below!
“I think what is important is not age, but how you look, feel and behave and I believe it to be “tremendously rude” to ask a woman her age – or even discuss it.
“My mother’s generation never did it,” she adds. “But you know, people have been calling me an older woman since I was 38!”
“I think maybe at last producers and directors have realised that, if they are going to be showing real life in the movies, then they are going to have to look at people who are older.”
“Look at Helen Mirren and Judi Dench – they are far more popular than me.”
She says: “People say why don’t you put your feet up? I do put my feet up – and I don’t do anything I don’t enjoy.”
“My children mean so much to me, but it was very hard. People enjoy this fantasy that I am a super-bitch because of Alexis, but I think it’s utterly ridiculous that powerful, resilient women are portrayed as dangerous, whereas in my experience it’s the predatory men who are the real threat.”
Long before the #MeToo era, Dame Joan says she was subjected to unwanted advances from several studio bigwigs, including one producer she was horrified to find lying naked in the bath after he summoned her to his New York hotel room to discuss a film part.
“He invited me to jump in and I turned on my heels and got out of the building as fast as I could,” she says.
Although she hated her developing curves as a teenager and considered herself a tomboy – a notion that changed, she says, “when boys discovered me” – her striking beauty as a young starlet caught the eye of many A-list icons.
In her autobiography she reveals that she turned down Dean Martin, Richard Burton, US Senator Bobby Kennedy and Ol’ Blue Eyes himself Frank Sinatra, who invited her to fly with him to Hamburg for a dinner date – which she rejected because of his notoriety for “one-night stands.”
She did, however, fall for Warren Beatty after they met at an LA party in 1959. They became engaged the following year when she fell pregnant but she felt it too early to start a family.
They eventually split after an 18-month romance because she found him too manipulative – “He made me turn down several movies” – and demanding in bed. “His need for sex several times a day wore me out,” she says.
Dame Joan now describes fifth hubby Percy as “the love of my life”.
“It’s a great marriage, a great relationship,” she says. Of course, we have our little spats like other couples might do, but we’ve both got our safe spaces. He has his office at home. I have my walk-in closet. And separate bathrooms. We’re really lucky – I realise most people don’t have two bathrooms.”
She also tearfully discusses the death of her author sister Jackie in 2015 aged 77. Just months before she died, Joan was made a Dame and was thrilled this June to take part in the Jubilee Pageant to celebrate The Queen’s 70 years on the throne.
“She’s a wonderful woman,” Dame Joan declares. “She’s inspirational, she’s terribly easy to talk to and terribly interested. It’s the sort of conversation you could have with your next door neighbour.”
Fans will soon be able to see Dame Joan playing Her Majesty’s somewhat less popular late aunt-in-law Wallis Simpson, whose love for King Edward VIII sparked a royal scandal and led to his abdication.
She is to star in In Bed with the Duchess, a film written by her friend Louise Fennell. She says: “I play the Duchess of Windsor from the time that the Duke died right up until her death. It’s a fabulous story.”
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