Every week, 93-year-old Deanne Mencher bakes 8 to 10 cheesecakes and delivers them to Dan Tana’s, a classic red-sauce restaurant in West Hollywood. Open since 1964, Dan Tana’s is known equally for its tuxedo-clad waitstaff and celebrity clientele and its chicken Parm and stiff martinis. Mencher’s cheesecakes have been a menu staple since 1966, when she was recruited by her friend and the restaurant’s owner, Dobrivoje “Dan Tana” Tanasijević, after he tried one of her creations at a Christmas Day brunch. (Tanasijević, who sold the restaurant in 2009, died in August at age 90.)
Light and fluffy, the cheesecake comes in two flavors, lemon and chocolate. The lemon version lacks the cloying sweetness and firm texture typical of New York–style cheesecake but delivers the same velvety cream cheese. (The original recipe included a small amount of rum, which Mencher omitted at the request of a sober family member who worked at Dan Tana’s at the time.) The chocolate cake is as smooth and silky as a classic French mousse, each slice coated in dark-chocolate sprinkles imported from Holland.
At first, the restaurant ordered up to six cheesecakes a week, which Mencher baked at her then-home in Beachwood Canyon. Now, Mencher uses a commercial kitchen. Though she has an assistant, she still does all the shopping and most of the baking. Aside from her attorney, no one knows the recipe. “The only time anyone else made [the cheesecakes] is when I had a shoulder replacement and carpal tunnel surgery,” Mencher says. “Other than that, every cake has been made by me.” The dessert that now bears her name on the Dan Tana’s menu: Cheesecake Deanne. Slices are $17 each. “Sometimes I do [get paid]. Sometimes I eat the credit,” Mencher says.
On a recent Tuesday evening, I sat down with Mencher at Dan Tana’s for what would become a three-hour dinner. She’s 4 foot 10—an inch below her peak—with a shock-white bob and a full face of makeup. She dines at the restaurant once or twice a week, usually ordering the vermicelli with basil, tomatoes, and spinach. However, after discovering that dinner was on the house, Mencher orders a bone-in veal chop and a glass of sauvignon blanc. “We’re doing it big tonight,” she says.
Waving away the basket of table bread, Mencher explains how she joined the group of investors behind one of Los Angeles’s most iconic restaurants. In 1963, she pawned her 2.5-carat diamond engagement ring from her estranged then-husband, Maurice Seiderman, the makeup artist for Citizen Kane, and handed the $600 profit to Tanasijević to help open the restaurant. Over the years, her contributions to the place were ongoing: Mencher sewed the restaurant’s original curtains. She was asked to be a godmother to Tanasijević’s youngest daughter, who is now in her 60s.
Mencher goes on to tell me about her decades of work as an actor (including in a 1999 episode of Law & Order), a secretary, a copywriter, a public school teacher, and a costume-jewelry designer (a business idea borrowed from her good friend Eve Babitz). Today, “Cheesecake Deanne” resembles a typical Los Angeles multi-hyphenate, publishing personal essays and musings on contemporary politics on a Substack called Deanne’s Newsletter. A memoir is on the way, too, recounting Mencher’s privileged upbringing in Queens, formative teenage years in Santa Fe, and experiences with LSD-assisted therapy.
She’s currently seeking a publisher. •
Patricia Kelly Yeo is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Eater, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and others. Previously, she was Los Angeles food and drink editor at Time Out.
