Mikala Jones-Fielder: This is the oldest family-owned
restaurant in Los Angeles.
The restaurant is most famous for two things:
its massive slabs of juicy prime rib
and its connection to old and new Hollywood.
As you can imagine, it's packed with history, charm,
and a couple of secrets.
This is the legendary Tam O'Shanter.
Customer: My favorite dish,
and, of course, being part of Lowry's,
I would say is the prime rib.
It's delicious.
John Lindquist: The feel that you get when you walk into
this restaurant is you're walking back, not only in time,
but you're walking into a fantasy land.
It looks like Snow White's house from outside,
and inside it's fully decorated
with knickknacks on the walls,
you know, from, literally from 1922 on to now.
There's always new stuff popping up on the wall,
something interesting.
One of the things we're most famous for is our prime rib.
So, here's this great piece of prime rib.
It weighs almost 20 pounds.
It has eight full bones on it.
And we're gonna take this, and we're gonna slice it,
and we might get eight portions out of this thing.
So, it's tried and true.
And what we do is we take this meat,
and we season it with our Lawry's seasoning salt,
and we spread it all over the meat.
And once it's completely seasoned
all the way around, it rests.
And then 24 hours later,
we pull out the seasoned piece of beef,
and it goes in the oven.
It goes in at 225 degrees for three hours,
and when that piece of meat is rested,
about 30 to 45 minutes later,
it's ready for service.
Mikala: Wow.
It's so savory.
It's so tender.
I love a good medium-rare steak,
and I see a lot of blood,
and it's making me really happy.
It's so good.
It melts in your mouth.
You can taste the gravy,
and the fat and the meat all together
is just absolutely incredible.
I don't think I can finish this
all by myself. Absolutely not.
So let's move on to the next dish.
John: So, not only do we serve full cuts of prime rib,
but also, during lunchtime,
one of my favorite things is to walk into the bar
and have a prime-rib sandwich,
where we take the prime rib and we slice it thin
and put it on a beautiful piece of brioche
to serve to our guests. A little au jus on the side
and some horseradish. It's amazing.
And that kind of came out of the necessity
that people wanted a quick lunch.
They didn't want to sit down to that full
kind of Sunday supper meal, especially at noon.
And it's quick, and that prime-rib sandwich
really fits the bill.
Mikala: I love that.
The bread, with the meat and the au jus,
it's, like, coming off my fingers.
Very messy but very good. [laughs]
Customer: I've been coming to the Tam for about
12 years now.
And the meat, the potatoes,
and the corn are the classic, right.
It's the classic Tam and Lowry's experience.
You can't go wrong with the corn
or the mashed potatoes or the prime rib.
John: The Tam O'Shanter grew up with Hollywood.
Hollywood grew up around us here,
so we had the silent-movie actors and actresses.
We had Fatty Arbuckle here in the bar.
We also had Mary Pickford.
Up to even present day, where Tom Hanks,
he shot "Larry Crowne" here,
so he spent a couple of weeks actually
writing parts of the script here in our restaurant.
We've done a whole host of other TV shows.
"The Office" was actually shot here.
All: Whoa!
Clark: Here we go!
Dwight: Oh, thank God. We are famished.
John: We've had "Mad Men" shoot right here at our bar.
We had "Glee" film at our bar as well.
Then, throughout the ages, we had Walt Disney,
who had a great association with the restaurant
'cause his studio was right down the road.
You know, unfortunately, he didn't have a commissary
built into his studio, so there was only
one restaurant in the area, and that was this.
And that tradition sort of stuck throughout the years.
So we're coming up on our 100th-year
anniversary in two years,
and we've been family-owned and family-run
by the same families for those almost 100 years now.
That's something incredible in Los Angeles,
especially because in Los Angeles
we tend to knock things down and change them.
But the Tam remains the same.
Customer: We've been coming here to this wonderful
Tam O'Shanter restaurant for many years.
When I was working and gainfully employed,
now I'm gainfully retired,
and we still come here.
The food is superb.
The service is great today, and what can I say?
It's great to be here with our friends of 90 years.
Brother in law, my sister, my wife, and what can I say?
It's just a beautiful place to be here,
and thanks for allowing me to be on camera.