Phil Rosenthal Opens New L.A. Diner: Max & Helen's First Look

Since Phil Rosenthal began traveling the planet a decade ago to shoot his food travel shows, first for PBS and now for Netflix, his own Los Angeles neighborhood has begun to feel like everywhere else in the world. Affluent Larchmont Village’s idiosyncratic local mom-and-pop retailers are being replaced by global chains like Aesop and Diptyque.

“This has been a wonderful kind of Mayberry, and it’s losing its character,” he says on a recent stroll along Larchmont Boulevard, a short distance from his longtime home in Hancock Park, a Mayberry where the net worth of the neighbors is often eight figures. Rosenthal, whose adult children still live nearby, has decided to do something about it by opening a new diner along the stretch — named Max & Helen’s, after his late parents. “I’m doing it f