LOS ANGELES Restaurateur, investor and former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan has converted the breakfast-lunch bakery cafe annex beside his landmark Original Pantry Cafe into the ultrahigh-end Riordan’s Tavern, which is slated to open late next month featuring “stiff drinks, great steaks.”
Sources at the 83-year-old Original Pantry, the low-end, old-fashioned steak specialty diner that Riordan bought in 1981, 12 years before becoming mayor, said the neighboring tavern will feature Prime-grade Angus steaks in the $60-$80 á la carte range and is expected to generate per-person tabs of $150-$160.
Though “never closed, never without a customer” is the motto of the Original Pantry, which serves some 3,000 guests daily, Riordan’s Tavern initially will serve lunch only while gearing up for dinner service.
“The neighborhood is changing, and the annex part drew customers away from the Pantry, so we decided to do something different,” a Pantry official said. The downtown neighborhood, dominated by the nearby sports and concert venue Staples Center, has had several higher-end restaurant debuts recently, including branches of the Roy’s Hawaiian-fusion and the Palm steakhouse chains.
