{"id":3635,"date":"2025-11-14T00:49:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/14\/friendsgiving-feast-at-friends-writers-l-a-restaurant-oybar\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T00:49:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T00:49:26","slug":"friendsgiving-feast-at-friends-writers-l-a-restaurant-oybar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/14\/friendsgiving-feast-at-friends-writers-l-a-restaurant-oybar\/","title":{"rendered":"Friendsgiving Feast at ‘Friends’ Writer’s L.A. Restaurant, OyBar"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tJeff Strauss, who had a hand in popularizing Friendsgiving, is hosting the holiday this year at his acclaimed Studio City gastropub. The veteran TV writer-turned-restaurateur co-penned the first-season Friends<\/a> <\/em>episode in 1994 that helped turn the found-family holiday into a new American cultural tradition (and kick off a series of memorable Thanksgiving episodes<\/a> on the sitcom).<\/p>\n

\n\tStrauss recalls that he was inspired by a group meal he spearheaded while a student at Tufts University in 1981, where he lived alongside fellow future TV writer Jeff Greenstein, who went on to become the showrunner of Will & Grace<\/em>: \u201cSome people liked going home for Thanksgiving<\/a> \u2014 and some people were dreading it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Friends<\/em> episode didn\u2019t coin the term Friendsgiving, but it did much to crystallize its ethos in the popular imagination. \u201cI had Monica\u2019s group-mom thing of trying to hold Thanksgiving for everybody, and Greenstein, who was also with Friends <\/em>at the time, brought up something he knew about me for Chandler\u2019s character, which was that my parents had told me they were getting divorced during one Thanksgiving.\u201d (Strauss and Greenstein later ran the Friends<\/em>-like Partners<\/em> \u2014 starring Jon Cryer and Tate Donovan \u2014 on Fox.)<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>
\n

\t\t\t\t\tChef Jeff Strauss<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Oy Bar<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tStrauss spent years working on other TV shows, including a long stint with Reba<\/em> on The WB. Then, as work dried up, he pivoted to food, another enduring creative interest. First with Jeff\u2019s Table, a popular Eastside sandwich spot, and then at OyBar<\/a> in Studio City, which inhabits the former Oyster House Saloon. The low-lit, time-warp space \u2014 a Paul Thomas Anderson reverie of the bygone San Fernando Valley \u2014 has since 2022 developed an ardently in-the-know following for dishes like a Jewish take on poutine (crispy potatoes, wagyu brisket) and a Vietnamese riff on a burger (hoisin ketchup, cilantro).<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his eight-course, wine-paired Friendsgiving feast (Nov. 21-22, $115 per person) the menu is replete with food references and other in-jokes to the first season of Friends<\/em>. Dishes include a series of tartlets, potatoes several ways, and a duck served with chestnuts, yams and mushrooms. \u201cSomething ends up on the menu,\u201d Strauss explains, \u201cthe same way it would end up in a script: If it\u2019s personal and it makes me smile.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Strauss, who had a hand in popularizing Friendsgiving, is hosting the holiday this year at his acclaimed Studio City gastropub. The veteran TV writer-turned-restaurateur co-penned the first-season Friends episode in 1994 that helped turn the found-family holiday into a new American cultural tradition (and kick off a series of memorable Thanksgiving episodes on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3636,2594,3635,2271,3638,1712,3637],"class_list":{"0":"post-3635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-feast","9":"tag-friends","10":"tag-friendsgiving","11":"tag-l-a","12":"tag-oybar","13":"tag-restaurant","14":"tag-writers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3637,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3635\/revisions\/3637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}