A signature white chili dish served at Kate Mantilini restaurant.

The din of voices haggling over movies and pitching TV series, as familiar as the trademark meatloaf and grilled salmon, has disappeared from Kate Mantilini, the Beverly Hills restaurant whose booths had long been a mainstay of Hollywood’s power lunch crowd.

Situated on Wilshire Boulevard in the heart of Beverly Hills, Kate Mantilini – a favourite of comedian Mel Brooks and late director Billy Wilder – closed its doors and packed up its wood-backed booths yesterday after 27 years.

“Many, many deals were made in those booths,” said Adam Lewis, the restaurant’s chief executive who made the decision to close after a rent increase. An outpost in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley will remain open.

The restaurant’s popularity among the Hollywood set was down in part to its location, said Tim Gray, a senior vice president of trade publication Variety.

It sat across from film studio The Weinstein Co. and two blocks from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the industry organisation that hands out the Oscars.

Kate Mantilini ranked as a top 10 business lunch spot for entertainment industry insiders, according to a Hollywood Reporter poll.

The restaurant also served as a backdrop in Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama Heat starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

Dishes included chicken pot pie and other comfort foods, and health-conscious staples such as brown rice with vegetables.

Marilyn Lewis, a self-described born-marketer who ran her own couture clothing line Cardinali in the 1960s-1970s, said she named the restaurant after her uncle’s mistress, whose long red-polished fingernails enthralled her as a child.