Another One Bites The Dust: Marie Callender's

This one hurts.

If you ever worked at E!, or visited someone who did, you have probably eaten at the Mid Wilshire Marie Callender's. Sadly E! is no longer on Wilshire Blvd, and as of this Sunday, neither will be Marie Callender's.

For 40 years, this flagship location, known as Callender's Grill was a great watering hole for the people who lived and worked at Mid Wilshire. When I worked at E! during the late 90's, there would always be a line out the door just to get a table (No I DON"T want to sit upstairs), and during the holidays...a line to buy their famous pies.

This was not a typical Marie Callender's...this was the "fancy" one. It had a full bar, and an amazing salad bar with chilled salad plates, and salad buffet on Sundays for brunch (yea at E! we worked on Sunday too). It also had a lovely grand piano and piano player who would tickle the ivories through lunch and sometimes even a full band.

I can't even begin to tell you how many business meetings and dates I had at this joint. The outside was used a lot as an establishing shot for a restaurant on "Melrose Place" and when you ate there, one could imagine Amanda Woodward and Billy at the next table. Of course, the fictional D&D Advertising was across the street.