The Tail o’ the Cock was one of the first upscale restaurants in California’s San Fernando Valley and featured in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Licorice Pizza, about growing up in the area in the Seventies.

‘I loved the whole vibe of the Tail o’ the Cock,’ Anderson told the LA Times in 2021 about the Studio City restaurant, on Ventura Boulevard near Coldwater Canyon. ‘It was my version of Hollywood royalty. But that royalty was not the Clark Gables and Spencer Tracys at the bar. It was Hanna-Barbera animators, commercial directors, writers and voice-over artists, mixed in with families and grandmas.’

Other celebrities who dined there were John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy.

They were also favorite venues for middle-aged diners who wanted a quiet and rarified atmosphere in the evenings and the location of many family celebrations like birthdays and anniversaries.

Sheldon A McHenry, who worked as a bank teller, gas station attendant, shipping clerk and assistant manager of the old Somerset House, was the founder of the Tail o’ the Cock restaurants – there was another on La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles which was established in 1939.

McHenry sold that Tail O’ the Cock 1982,and it was closed in February, 1985.

The Tail O’ the Cock in Studio City closed after 40 years of business in 1987 to make way for a shopping mall.

NB; we were intrigued by the prices on this early 1960s menu. A bottle of Chateau Margaux cost $5.75 back then. Today, according to our search of wine lists in some top US restaurants, it would cost between $1850 and $2400. Quite a mark-up!