GIGA GRANADA HILLS

On Saturday, March 27 at 10am, Petit Park will host a "Spring Egg Hunt." There will also be a moonbounce, "photo with bunny," and face painting. All publicity materials for this event conspicuously avoid use of the word "Easter," so I guess I will too.

Contradicting earlier accounts given to Giga Granada Hills , Biff Naylor of Tiny Naylor's, Biff's, and Du-par's fame called to set the record straight on the Du-par's eviction. "Almost none of that is true," Naylor said of the story that the business was evicted and patrons were escorted out of the restaurant. Almost? "That's a wild rumor. There were no patrons of the premises, we closed voluntarily, and turned the premises back to the landlord. There was an eviction served three days after we vacated the premises." Naylor said that they were behind on rent payments as "part of the negotiating strategy" with property owners whose rents Naylor said were too high -- "nearly twice what it is at Farmer's Market." So the management "dragged the rent to see if we could get them to come to the table. Of course we will pay them back rent." Naylor didn't rule out a return to Granada Hills. "If another locatio...

In a rather dramatic development for diners who were still mid-meal, the Granada Hills' Du-par's was closed last week by sheriffs, who carried out an eviction during business hours, escorting patrons out of the restaurant, sources said. It seems this isn't the first round of trouble for the Du-par's chain in recent years. The Thousand Oaks Du-par's was closed last year after losing its lease, and during its last years the location had been plagued with health department violations. Du-par's did not return phone calls requesting comment, nor did the property's landlord, Regency Centers.

Someone recently posted this video, which shows that no matter how much you try to hip it up, you just can't.

For once, they're not overcharging.

“Is this a toy house?” My four-year-old daughter was struggling to comprehend the garish lavender and green building in front of us. “It’s a tea party place,” I explained, as we walked up the entryway, its banisters still wrapped in Christmas-season garlands on a March afternoon. “Does somebody live here?” my daughter asked, still trying to make sense of it all. “It looks like a house!” The fact that Gilded Rose Manor clearly was a house, with few changes to its architecture, is a big part of its charm, and the former residence turned girly haven on Devonshire Street just west of Balboa is all about charm, of an achingly earnest sort. Fake flowers are everywhere—over the doorways, painted on the walls, even adorning the Christmas tree still standing in the corner, and one room is even painted to resemble a faux-seaside scene. Gilded Rose is the perfect place to go if you want to delight a small girl, or humiliate a small boy. Has any male ever dared set foot in this place? It might...

"Everybody in Granada Hills basically comes to our bar on St. Patrick's day," says Danny Deprest, who co-manages Oh Grady's in Old Town Granada Hills with his partner Melissa, who owns the bar. Oh Grady's, like most Irish-themed bars, expects to have a full house on March 17th, but they're planning to keep things slightly lower-key this year than last. At the height of Oh Grady's 2009 St. Patrick's Day party, Los Angeles Fire Marshalls paid a visit at about 11:30 p.m. and shut the place down for overcrowding and lack of a proper fire permit. The lack of a permit was the result of a simple misunderstanding, Danny explains. "The entire time the bar was open -- from when it was Valentino's, and then became Oh Grady's -- nobody ever caught that it didn't have a fire permit. We took over almost two years ago, and you have to go to Building and Safety, and Alcholic Beverage Control, and no one caught that there was no fire permit. We thoug...