The Spare Room at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel Takes You Back

March 9th, 2011

Recently I have become enamored with the Roosevelt Hotel’s new Spare Room on the Mezzanine level. Like a spare room in your home, this small space offers a loungy 1920′s cocktail vibe with two vintage bowling lanes. Step back in time, sip a drink from Prohibition times, and try to find the secret photo booth. My second time there I went home with a black and white photo strip memory. Hint: check the bowling shoes area.

This place enchanted me the first time I was there, probably because I liked the interesting looking people around me. Everyone was so hip and beautiful looking and it didn’t hurt that my bowling alley view all night consisted none other than romance actor Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Blue Valentine). As he pealed away his vintage sweater, I watched him bowl and dance, as well as get drooled on by tons of women, as well as Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s daughter Rumor in the lane nearby.

Another time I was there I enjoyed a punch bowl. I said in my stupidity, “What is a punch bowl?” And voila! The cool vintage dressed waitress brought to my table what looked like a 1950′s glass cut bowl filled with something spectacular (gin maybe?) and a ladle with small cups so we could all share the drink from the punch bowl. Now that is a clever idea! There are also five drinks on the menu written on a chalk board. $14 each. I like the Chilean Sunset which is made of Encanto Pisco, pineapple juice, lime juice, red wine and egg white. Maybe you would like to try the Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver, which consists of Guinness, gin and ginger beer or the Spare Room Snap rye whiskey, SNAP, lemon juice and nutmeg.

In the Spare Room you can also play any old-time games, like Monopoly, chess, backgammon, Connect Four, NY Times crossword puzzles, Jenga…. all while you drink.

Bringing it back to an old school vibe. I love it!

Did I mention you can bowl in $800 leather shoes designed by Esquivel? Bowling lanes rent for $100 an hour, which I think is a pretty good deal considering if you are with 5 people, that’s $20 to bowl your heart out and that includes the shoe rental.

The Spare Room is open from 6pm to 2am on Monday, and Wednesday-Saturday. Make a reservation ahead of time or try to get there before 9 PM to get in. Some nights are tight, especially when celebs show up making your entrance harder.

The Spare Room
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (Mezzanine Level)
7000 Hollywood Blvd. (at Orange)
Ph. 323-769-7296

PS.

By the way, the Roosevelt Hotel is really stepping it up. We all know the Library Bar, Teddy’s (night club) and Tropicana (pool bar), and that fabulous front bar Twenty Five Degrees with those yummy burgers and grilled cheese (I saw Steven Spielberg there once, definitely a highlight), but a new restaurant just opened this month called Public Kitchen and Bar (the old Dakota)…. and I am dying to get into the new Beacher’s Madhouse, which apparently has been only open for celebrity parties. A friend of mine told me you must be a member to get in and the first 60 day trial period is already booked and a table for 8 is the maximum you can apply for. The Madhouse holds about a 100 people. I got a call from my friend yesterday letting me know he could get a table for my birthday, but it would be about $1200 or more. Why do I want to go? I heard monkeys, midgets, and who knows what else you may be entertained with in this vaudeville – like aura that Las Vegas-based impresario Jeffrey Beacher and his new LA partner, actor David Arquette started. Last month the duo began throwing parties in this new space.