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Community Corner

The Heyday of Ho Toy's in Sherman Oaks

For about a half-century, the Chinese restaurant on the Van Nuys Boulevard 'Strip' brought great food, celeb diners to the neighborhood.

For many years, beginning in the early 1950s, Ho Toy's on Van Nuys Boulevard was the best Chinese food restaurant in Sherman Oaks, hands down—and possibly the best in the entire San Fernando Valley.

The restaurant was originally a small takeout place just south of the where the 101 Freeway is now and north of the restaurant's main location at 4630 Van Nuys Blvd.

Riding on the popularity of its takeout food, owners Bob and Bill Lee opened the 1950s-style Ho Toy's in an "upstairs-downstairs" space much like the famed Sam Wo restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. The kitchen was on the ground floor, and customers would see it when walking in and then up a staircase to the dining areas and cocktail lounge. Very James Bond!

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Ho Toy's was remodeled in the mid-'60s to create a more colorful, festive decor. (A rare photo of the "new" dining room is featured here, circa 1966.) It's easy to imagine Mad Men's Don Draper having a lunch meeting there. The food was incredible, and you could smell all the Cantonese delicacies the moment you walked in and past the kitchen. What a great marketing concept!

Back in the 1960s, Van Nuys Boulevard was buzzing with hugely popular restaurants, such as the nearby Otto's Pink Pig and Corky's Coffee Shop. There was June Ellen's Donuts, a huge hangout for motorcyclists and teenagers on Wednesday cruise nights on the boulevard.

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Ho Toy's had a back entrance off its rear parking lot used often by celebrities who came to dine there. Frank Sinatra and other members of the Rat Pack frequently dined at Ho Toy's because it was away from the Hollywood hubbub, and the food was equal to anything offered in L.A.'s Chinatown, a much longer drive downtown.

During my years as a publicist for Nancy Sinatra, I dined at Ho Toy's, and Nancy relayed to me her father's fondness for it. "Dad loved Chinese food, and Ho Toy's was certainly one of his favorite spots. Often he would send Jilly [Rizzo, Frank's go-to guy] to pick up food from here [Ho Toy's]. Bob and Bill would keep the kitchen open late if Dad was coming in with a group of friends."

Other celebrities who were regulars at Ho Toy's included James Coburn, Art Linkletter and his family, Dick Van Dyke and, in later years, Tim Allen, Lesley Ann Warren and Albert Brooks.

Ho Toy's had a main dining room and a private dining room upstairs. The main room had windows overlooking Van Nuys Boulevard. (See the front entrance photo here.) I fondly remember visiting Ho Toy's on many occasions as a young boy in the 1960s and eating there frequently through the years until it closed, sometime around 1998, some 45 years after first opening in Sherman Oaks.

I still have an ashtray from Ho Toy's, which owner Bill Lee let me have on a visit there in the 1970s. It is a happy reminder of the wonderful festive atmosphere and delicious Chinese food they served Valley residents for so many years.

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