The Amazin' Amazon
Amazon Bar and Grill, Sherman Oaks
by Heidi Matz
If one were to judge the Amazon Bar and Grill by either its name—the world’s largest river flowing through Brazil—or its “causes”—the restaurant loudly donates funds to groups such as Rain Forest Action Network (RAN)—one might not only get sweaty, but think perhaps that this place caters exclusively to the harmonically converged, crystal-wielding Birkenstock-shod who still eat sandwiches with sprouts. Not so. Amazon, though a breath of fresh tropical air, is a restaurant slash disco for the 90s, a Ventura Boulevard a-go-go, where the elite in heat meet to eat to a Latin beat.
Open only seven months, the place draws attractive folk who rub elbows and more under a million-dollar trompe l’oeil of twinkling stars and imported palm fronds. Live Caribbean jazz blares from the “Tree house” stage and between sets one can hear the piped-in jungle noises of calling birds and agitated gorillas. Loops of Medicine Man starring a perspiring Sean Connery vibrate from several ceiling video monitors.
Dining tables are on a first-come, first-served basis. If you choose to eat, you’re in for a half-hour wait on most nights, which gives you time to peruse the rain forest info-literature in the wall rack and take in the atmosphere. The menu, which bears the restaurant’s valorous statement of concern for the “indigenous people” of the rain forest, covers everything from soup to nuts—literally. Featuring grilled free-range chickens, pastas, trail mix (from Brazil), salads and fish, the menu is an eclectic mix of tropical-Caribbean Spaigo-ish fat-free fare, sure to please all but the tragically carnivorous. Of the 45 or so daily menu selections, there are six items that utilize products from the rain forest.
Although the food is very good and reasonably priced, the Amazon crowd is drawn to the after-hours ambiance. On one recent weekend night ‘round ten o’clock, the dinner tables were busy, and the bar was even busier, with happy people smoking cigarettes (there is an expensive smoke-filtering system in the lounge), drinking chic beer, and working the room. They come dressed in politically incorrect leathers and other assorted animal products. They are young, short, thin, beautiful, bald, old, rich—a melting pot of singles. The effect is Tarzan in mating season—where the Valley meets the jungle. The light for all these moths is the beneficent conceit of the 1990’s—preserve the planet, and make sure you’re noticed doing so.
Run by 34-year-old Tony Colagreco (owner of a small Santa Monica pizza chain and former owner of several nightclubs, now defunct), his friend Steve Cuccio, 32, and three other investors, the Amazon Bar and Grill considers RAN and the Amazonia Foundation partners as well. These charities pull in 10 percent of the restaurant’s profits quarterly. One thousand dollars has already been appropriated to buy a medical supply boat to serve the ailing rain forest dwellers.
“It all started after a TV show I saw on PBS,” he says soberly. His interest grew after meeting the people from RAN at a booth during a Santana concert. He spent more than a year researching the Amazon’s endangered Yanomami Indians (“they’re the landscape people of the rain forest”) when he decided to marry his passion with business.
“We needed a place to hang that was fresh, exciting,” he says. “Stanley’s used to rule the Valley for years.” And after an extravagant remodeling of the former Manhattan Coolers restaurant into a theme-park jungle ambiance, the Amazon opened in Sherman Oaks to fanfare, critical raves and a constantly busy kitchen. “It’s for a worthy cause. Yes, it’s trendy—but it’s working,” Colagreco admits.
A tall, dark Italian, Colagreco is a native of New Jersey now living in Encino in the company of two large rottweilers. Thirteen years ago, after earning two business degrees from Fordham University, he came out to California because the west coast offered “a little bit of everything.” While his first job was waiting tables at Chippendales (known for its exotic male dancers), Colagreco found success in real estate investments. As it turned out, the first office building he bought happened to house an underground nightclub, which led to his unexpected (yet fruitful) involvement in the club scene.
Although his popular dance clubs (Boys and Girls, Rubber, Blak and Bloo) brought him fame, fortune, and the company of some influential friends (Sly Stallone and Dolph Lundgren were his former partners at Blak and Bloo), Colagreco says he wanted to get out of the business. “You know, I was never happy just owning clubs,” he says. “I’ve always had this Catholic Big Brother side of me that wasn’t fulfilled before.” He believes that the Amazon is a step in a better direction. “It has a longer shelf life, it has the common club theme of entertainment, and, most of all, it’s a restaurant with a cause,” he says.
For now, at least, Colagreco feels that his plate is finally full, and the future for the Amazon could be very big—international, even. Already, there is a second Amazon in Santa Monica, and talk of offshoots in locations such as Westwood, San Diego, and New York. And think of the marketing. The Sherman Oaks location is due to open an adjacent gift store, “Al E. Gator’s Boutique,” that will carry sundries from Brazil as well as T-shirts and hats emblazoned with the snappy Amazon Bar and Grill alligator-in-a-swamp cartoon logo. Soon, Colagreco says, he will visit the rain forest himself, and “live off the land—I can’t wait. I’m 100-percent committed.” ♦