Rainbow Bar & Grill
The Rainbow Bar & Grill is one of those legendary LA haunts that has been home to the debauchery of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Guns'n'Roses, and Aerosmith, to name a small few. Opened in 1972, it hit the Sunset Strip (Sunset just east of Doheny) as the '60s were giving way to the intense '70s.
The restaurant portion is so deliciously winding and Tudor-esque--it just screams of years of untold debauchery. All red leather and exposed beams, it horseshoes around, beginning and ending at an oversized fire place that backs up to the stairs and the bar behind it. The bars are outside on the covered porch and in the back ($10 cover), and upstairs is a separate dance floor (additional $5 cover).
The decor is aching with stories of bygone eras--photographs and records and things plaster the walls. The crowd is eclectic; it changes during the week and on the weekends is filled with aging rock star-wannabes and pretty young girls. The drinks are normal; the food is okay (a wide array of pasta dishes, appetizers, pizzas, salads, hamburgers, etc.); the wait staff has always been perfectly pleasant to my friends and I (they even accomodated us when I had a big party for my birthday a few weeks ago).
Go for the ambience, go for the drinks, maybe go for the food--but definitely go.
