Cobb Salad

The classic Cobb salad, priced at $21.50, is one of The Grill most popular lunch items.
The classic Cobb salad, priced at $21.50, is one of The Grill most popular lunch items.
Another lunch dish to try is The Grill, pan-fried Dover sole, priced at $44.75
From left: Grill regular Jeffrey Katzenberg was photographed with his DreamWorks Animation Croods directors Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco at his regular table, No. 127, on Jan. 15 by Joe Pugliese.
DeMicco jokes, "As a onetime assistant at William Morris, I've made reservations here more often than I've eaten here."
WME TV head Rick Rosen (right) and his client Dick Wolf, TV producing titan (Law & Order SVU, Chicago P.D.) and novelist (The Execution), were photographed Jan. 31 at table No. 101. Says Rosen, "It's a commissary — a very expensive commissary with better food."
"This is considered fine dining, but it's not stuffy at all," says Gonyea of The Grill, where she's worked for 13 years. In that time she's become attuned to the politics of the room: "When I have booths from different agencies, I'll put a buffer with an entertainment lawyer — a Bruce Ramer or a Skip Brittenham." And she has developed an innate sense of the exact limits of the space: "You have to know everything about the room, down to which tables have smaller bases at the bottom, for a few extra inches to maneuver for extra seating. I've spent time as a flight attendant, so I'm really good at packing."
NPR's Don Gonyea calls his sister Pam "a truly genuine person. In a city where that's not always in great supply, I think that serves her really well."
For the industry, most important players, the convivial yet conservative Grill on the Alley — which turned 30 on Jan. 31 — represents a still point in the churning world of entertainment. The throwback 4,600-square-foot Beverly Hills restaurant, half a block from Rodeo Drive, with its white-jacketed servers and menu of un-ironic classics, is lit daily with stars.