Mel’s Drive-In – Hollywood

I’m getting old. A night of dancing at the Jay-Z/Justin Timberlake concert and I need to rest my knees. Stay up past midnight once and I’ll take a whole day to recover. So believe me when I say that clubbing and dancing until 2 AM at Hollywood’s Level 3 required a little bit of winding down.

And what better place to wind down than Mel’s? For starters, it’s probably the only decent diner still open at 3 AM. Plus with its vinyl booths and jukeboxes, wide windows and a 24/7 breakfast menu, there’s no place more satisfying if it’s the diner experience you’re craving. Seriously, if you looked up diner in the dictionary, the first photo would be of Mel’s.

The food is a bit pricey for a diner, but I’m okay paying $8 or 9 for my Waffle Plate when the valet parking is free. I usually can’t finish waffles with egg and bacon on top, but these waffles were crispy-on-the-outside slabs of fluffy goodness so I licked my plate clean.

Despite late-night noshing at Mel’s Drive-In right on Sunset Blvd and a Sweet Rose Creamery run at Brentwood Country Mart, there hasn’t been a single star in sight. Either the stars I see don’t shine brightly enough or I need to get out more…I think I need to get out more…It’s just so hard when I’m getting old… Then again, stars or no stars, it’s the nights that end in 24-hour diners that make me thank my lucky stars to be living in LA.