The original Pig’n Whistle opened in 1908 as a candy shop and soda fountain in downtown Los Angeles. By the 1920s it had grown to a successful restaurant chain with outlets all along the West Coast. is location, adjoining Sid Grauman’s Egyptian eater, opened in 1927—ironically, the same year that e Jazz Singer heralded the end of the silent-film era. But as Hollywood’s Golden Age faded, so did the Pig’n Whistle. The Hollywood location closed in 1952. The space eventually devolved into a Numero Uno pizza joint.
Cut to the late 1990s, when Breed and his partner, Alan Hajjam, fresh from success with the celebrity-studded Roxbury supper club on the Sunset Strip, determined to transform the center of Hollywood from its sordid state—beginning with the Pig’n Whistle. “I felt threatened when I first got here,” Breed recalls. “There were metal shutters on all the shops. I was one of the first people to tear them out and put a patio out on Hollywood Boulevard.” He and Hajjam also demolished Numero Uno’s drop ceiling and found the Pig’n Whistle’s elaborately carved oak beams underneath. Some original tiles were discovered in the basement and incorporated into the décor. The restaurant reopened in 2001, aside the recently restored Egyptian. “We brought the glam back to Hollywood,” Breed says proudly. “We threw a party for Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston when they were still together. I sat here, at this table, with Jack Nicholson and Kevin Costner.”
