"We bought the restaurant for that reason, to make sure that yet another family business didn't go under."
That's Shelli Azoff, co-owner of Nate 'n Al's, talking to the Beverly Press last June about why she and her husband Irving bought the deli in 2019. She said it while confirming something that had regulars nervous all spring: the building at 414 North Beverly Drive, home to Nate 'n Al's since 1945, is coming down. The Beverly Hills Planning Commission approved a development plan for a three-story, 14,448-square-foot commercial building on the site that June, and the one-story structure that has fed the neighborhood's power breakfasts for eighty years is going with it.
Here's the part that gets lost in the alarm: Nate 'n Al's isn't going anywhere. Building owner Stephen Cloobeck has said publicly that the deli's next home sits one block south, at the corner of Beverly Drive and Dayton Way. Azoff hasn't confirmed every detail, but she's been consistent on the one that matters. The booths are moving. The deli isn't closing.
Walk two blocks east to Canon Drive and you'll find the version of this story that didn't end the same way.
The Building That Didn't Get a Second Act
For decades, the Palm sat at 267 North Canon Drive, a steakhouse that fed Hollywood's power lunch crowd the way Nate 'n Al's fed its power breakfast. It closed a few years back, and the closing landed hard on people who'd been going there since before some of the restaurants opening around it now existed at all.
Nobody rebuilt a new home for the Palm one block over. Instead, a New York hospitality group called Quality Branded signed a lease and brought Bad Roman, its maximalist Italian concept, out west. Bad Roman made its West Coast debut on Canon Drive on Tuesday, May 26, walking into the exact address the Palm had occupied, with a boar sculpture and greyhound statues standing guard next to green velvet banquettes. Quality Branded's CEO, Michael Stillman, told Observer he'd been thinking about old-school Los Angeles rooms like Dan Tana's and the Formosa Cafe while designing the space. He skipped outdoor seating on purpose. He wanted the moody, labyrinthine feel those places have.
So the room still looks and feels like it belongs to old Los Angeles. The name on the door, the ownership group, and the menu have nothing to do with what came before. That's the difference between what happened to Nate 'n Al's and what happened to the Palm. One institution got a second address. The other got a tenant who studied its ghost.
Bad Roman isn't the only new name on that stretch. Azur, a French-Mediterranean concept, is also new to Canon Drive this year, part of what the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau has called one of the most concentrated waves of new restaurant tenants the Golden Triangle has seen in years. Marea, the first West Coast outpost of a well-known New York dining room, and 88 Club, the supper-club-style Chinese restaurant that opened under Top Chef winner Mei Lin, both arrived in that same window. Lin has since moved on to other projects, but the restaurant she opened is still seating guests under a different chef. The pattern repeats itself even inside a single address: the name on the marquee changes more often than the room does.
What Actually Survives a Rebuild
None of this is really about food. It's about what it takes for a business to still be standing on the same block a decade from now.
Nate 'n Al's survived a pandemic closure in March 2020, a change of ownership the year before that, and now a full demolition of its building, because the people who bought it in 2019 had the standing and the money to make relocation a foregone conclusion rather than an open question. That ownership group includes Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Jeff Shell and Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford, alongside the Azoffs. When George Schlatter told the Hollywood Reporter in 2020 that more deals for Laugh-In got made at Nate 'n Al's than anywhere else in town, he wasn't describing a sandwich shop. He was describing an institution with enough gravity that its own landlord problem became everyone else's problem too, and enough friends with capital to solve it.
The Palm had loyal customers. Henry Winkler has said something similar about Nate 'n Al's, that he met his wife there and later brought his grandchildren on Sundays. Loyalty wasn't the variable that decided which building got a sequel and which one got a new tenant. Ownership was. Beverly Hills Planning Commissioner Lou Milkowski put it plainly when he voted to approve the redevelopment: he called it good progress for the city even while admitting he was personally sad to see the old building go. Progress and preservation aren't opposites here. They're just two different outcomes that depend on who's holding the lease when the wrecking ball question comes up.
What's Actually Changing on These Two Streets Right Now
- 414 North Beverly Drive: The one-story Nate 'n Al's building is being demolished for a three-story, 14,448-square-foot commercial structure. The deli is expected to relocate to Beverly Drive and Dayton Way, one block south.
- 267 North Canon Drive: The former Palm space is now Bad Roman, open Tuesday through Saturday evenings, the first West Coast location for the New York-based Italian concept.
- Canon Drive, more broadly: Azur, a French-Mediterranean restaurant, opened this year as part of a broader wave of Beverly Hills debuts that also includes Marea and 88 Club.
- The Beverly Hills Farmers' Market: Still runs Sundays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Civic Center Drive between Third Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, with free two-hour parking in the Civic Center garage, unaffected by any of the above.
Reading the Block Without the Panic
If you live in this part of Beverly Hills, the temptation is to read every construction fence and every new awning as evidence that something is disappearing. Sometimes that's true. The Palm is gone in every way that matters, even if its old address still smells like garlic and green velvet on a Friday night. But the Nate 'n Al's story is the more useful one to hold onto, because it tells you what actually determines whether a place you love gets to keep existing here: not how long it's been open, not how many stories get told about it, but whether the people who own it have the resources and the will to move it rather than let it end.
That's worth knowing the next time a familiar storefront goes dark. The right question isn't always "what's replacing this." Sometimes it's "where did it go," and the answer, at least on Beverly Drive this year, is one block south.
If you're the kind of person who wants to understand the Golden Triangle at this level of detail, whether you're weighing a purchase near these blocks or simply want a clearer read on the neighborhood you already call home, Barbra Stover has spent more than two decades tracking how Beverly Hills changes street by street. Let's Connect.
