Trani’s Dockside Station: The Last Torch Bearer on the Waterfront

Upon entering Trani’s Dockside Station, you’re greeted by the edge of a 40-foot-long serpentine bar made from mahogany, saved from the demolition of T.C. Cocktail Lounge (or T.C’s Bar), a divey bar that has been replaced by a drive-through Starbucks on Gaffey Street.

T.C.’s Bar, named for Tony Califano, originally opened in 1978. But for more than 30 years prior, that bar shaped like three connecting houses on the edge of 9th and Gaffey Street was called the Mirror Room. 

Executive Chef Dustin Trani recalled how he acquired the bar and what led to the decision to open Dockside at the former iconic San Pedro eatery, Canetti’s Seafood Grotto.   

“‘I don’t know what you guys could do with it, right, but it’d be a shame to have them demo it and tear it apart,’” Philip Califano told him. “So we go, ‘Alright. We’ll take it.’”  

Dustin and his crew cut the bar into two pieces and let it sit in his brother’s garage for the past 10 years, not knowing what they were going to do with it. Then in 2019, their business partner Willie Carranza came up with the idea of opening a restaurant at the old Canetti’s diner next to the San Pedro Fish Market.

“We were looking at places from downtown LA, to Manhattan Beach, to Belmont Shores and … nothing really seemed the right fit,” Dustin said. Then the Canetti’s/Dockside opportunity came about. 

Even before Canetti’s was housed there, a stone’s throw away from the San Pedro wholesale fish market, the building was historic, which should be designated as a historic landmark. There don’t appear to be any plans to make it as such.

“It was a perfect fit to what the Tranis are in San Pedro,” Dustin said. “It just made so much sense.” 

Inside the completed buildout of Dockside, Dustin and his general contracting team were able to keep all of the original wood beams that are over 100 years old. Dustin noted that construction on the immigration building began in 1918. 

The restoration work on the beams is so good that it elicits involuntary double-takes when a patron enters. 

“Oh yeah. The trees were built different back then,” Dustin quipped when asked about it.  “We simply came in and brushed them up and sandblasted them.”

Dustin pointed to the arch beams running throughout the restaurant, explaining that they were intentionally exposed, giving the restaurant’s decor a modern but old-world sensibility before drawing attention to the door to the right of the bar.

The Dockside Station may turn out to be one of the few restaurants and developments at West Harbor that aims to hold tight to the remaining vestiges of old San Pedro as a tsunami of new developments threatens to wash away the past into oblivion.

“It just felt right and it felt like we could do something special and with all the development of San Pedro and the West Harbor, it was just right before the boom. So it’s a perfect time.” 

During Canetti’s final decade-and-a-half of existence, it felt like an island disconnected from the rest of the waterfront. Dustin explained that there have been talks of putting a little gateway bridge over the Fisherman Slip.

There’s also talk that the trolley bus system will include a stop in the vicinity of Dockside.

AltaSea is located in the warehouses further south on Harbor Boulevard that are all going to be rented out. Dustin believes that as AltaSea develops, everything will come together. 

The biggest key, however, has been their relationship with the Johnsons, a key partner in the LA Waterfront Alliance with Jerico Development.

“The Johnsons are really close with us and we’ve always talked to him about opening up a space down there,” Dustin said. “When this came about, we were able to jump on it and get down here.”

Dustin points to all the new infrastructure and the completion of new apartments and condo developments in San Pedro as evidence for betting on San Pedro. 

“It’s coming,” Dustin said. “It’s not a pipe dream like it was for 20 years.”

The young 40-something chef says he sees the change, starting with the influx of J.Trani’s clientele transplanting here from Hermosa and Redondo Beach, and from Torrance, Santa Monica, Los Angeles and Hollywood.  

The bigger catalyst that convinced Dustin that this was the best move was the fact that the San Pedro wholesale fish market was just 30 feet away from where the boats are loading. 

“We will get first dibs on everything,” Dustin said.

Dockside Station is going to be open six nights a week, from 5 to 10 p.m., Wednesday through Monday. The restaurant will be closed on Tuesdays, starting out, and then within a few months of getting going, Dockside will grow into lunches and Sunday brunch and even do cafe-style breakfasts. There will be a little coffee bar for connoisseurs to get an espresso cappuccino and some grab-and-go pastries. 

The Tranis negotiated a 20-year lease with the Harbor Department with the help of the port’s waterfront and commercial real estate directors Mike Galvin and Meagan Sestich. 

Dustin credits general contractor Jack O’Grande, Billy Albano, Willie Carranza and his father Jim Trani in getting the construction to come together the way it has. 

“I have to give it to my dad, Jim Trani, who spearheaded this whole thing,” Dustin said. “He was a linchpin that kept this whole project together. He’s already built two restaurants and several houses.” 

Dustin explained that just having his dad involved is what pushed the plans. In recounting local dining history, Dustin noted that his father built Trani Square, where the Green Onion now resides (although its days are numbered as it makes way for a still newer development). That whole block was Trani’s Square. That J. Trani’s restaurant moved from this location in 1978 to its current location on 9th Street in 1990.

Dustin noted that without the help of former Councilman Joe Buscaino and Councilman Tim McOsker, Dockside may still have been six more weeks out before completion. 

The new restaurant, including the outside dining, occupies 5,000 square feet or 60% of the bottom floor of the old immigration building. The rest of the building is occupied by the Yankovic company.

The inheritor of the legacy Canetti’s Seafood Grotto will likely be the only establishment on the waterfront carrying on the torch of transmitting San Pedro history in photos and furniture.  

Dockside’s cuisine will be seafood based, a European coastal cuisine with a lot of global influences on it. For anyone who has ever dined at J. Trani’s restaurant, you’ll see a lot of Asian influence on the menu, it’s very subtle and sprinkled throughout the dishes. Dustin said they will have the same influences and concepts at Dockside, but a completely different menu. 

Dustin said the menu will have a lot of different skewered items cooked over open coals. The whole concept of the layout is to have a wood-burning hearth to the right and a raw bar to the left.  

On the fire, they’re going to be doing a lot of whatever catch comes in — grilled fish. 

“I’m calling it European-style yakitori — skewered items charred over open coals,” Dustin explained. “Whether we’re doing the octopus or fresh calamari that comes in.”

They’re doing a kind of a cross between a Middle Eastern and Italian-style lamb meatball with the seasonings. It’ll be grilled over the open hearth and then finished with some aged balsamic, some fennel and fresh grapes.
“It’s just the whole idea of having bold flavors delivered very simply with accents,” Dustin said. 

Dustin said Dockside will be doing a lighter fare of pasta, as compared to J.Trani’s, where you go for pizzas, pastas, and steaks. Dustin noted that steaks will also be available at Dockside. 

Dockside will feature a market-cut, bone-in prime ribeye, that will be grilled, sliced, and coastal-style. So it’ll be finished with some olive oils, chopped Spanish anchovies, a little bit of lemon, and a warm chicory salad, some bitter greens that will cut through the fat of the ribeye on everything, Dustin explained. 

Furthermore, he plans on using those flavors together with high-quality Spanish anchovies, to give an umami flavor bomb giving it a richness and saltiness without the fishiness, creating an unbelievable explosion of flavor. 

They’ll also start doing Peruvian-style ceviches, sashimi fatty bluefin as well as about three to four oysters, which will come in seasonally and whatever is best at that time. Dockside will also feature their Peruvian scallops which is probably the biggest seller at J.Trani’s.

“So we’re trying to strive to get as close to that as we possibly can,” Dustin said. 

Dockside’s menu will also include food from aquaculture sources. Dustin explained that since the whole process is just around the corner from the restaurant, it’s a no-brainer. 

“They start the aquaculture in there. They bring them up to, what was it like in the Pismo Beach area in that area. They raise them in the ocean there and then they bring them back down. So, definitely, as they get rolling with that, we’d love to feature them.”

The idea with the menu development here is to feature all things local and hyperlocal. So it includes an Italian-style oyster mushroom, which is grown by Cliffside Mushrooms, a local company. 

They’re going to simply skewer with a kind of Sicilian-style almond and herb pesto. Dustin’s concept is to keep it simple and not overdo it. 

“Just let the star ingredient be pristine, and let it shine,” Dustin says. 

“That’s my kind of philosophy,” Dustin said. “It’s funny how chefs will overcomplicate things and as they mature their careers, they start digressing. And then understanding that the simplest things are the hardest things to do as far as keeping that consistency on it. So, I think of myself as a chef 10 years ago trying to put 10 things on a plate and then look back at it and note that it’s too much. I didn’t need that. You need to just simplify things and just let this be the star, then give it some accent to make it shine.” 

Four generations deep, more than a century worth of collective experience, restaurants are what the Tranis do. Dustin isn’t just being pithy when he says “patience is a virtue.” 

“The restaurant industry is very difficult,” Dustin said. “There are a lot of aspects to it to get right to be successful. From the bar to the labor in the kitchen, every little thing of it has to be in line. It comes down to the service too.”  

Dustin has been working in the kitchen since the age of 11 or 12 years old. 

“People were always astonished working with me as a chef in my 20s,” he said. “‘Why do you cook like you’ve been in the business for 20 years,’ they’d say. And I’m like, that’s because I have been in the business for over 20 years. You’re constantly growing as a chef in the kitchen.”

With that said, Dustin is still growing. He recently brought on an executive sous chef, Zachary Morrison. 

Morrison is a local guy who grew up in Long Beach but spent the last five years at the acclaimed Bestia Restaurant in downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District. Morrison’s background is in whole animal butchery, which will make him unique when it comes to the hearthside of the Dockside dining experience. 

Aside from his background in animal butchery, Morrison plans to tighten operations in the kitchen by reducing waste. A lot of the savings will occur with the dehydrating and turning into powder much of the scraps that will be generated from regular kitchen operations and using the powders as garnishments, enhancing regular dishes. 

Dustin and his entire team put a lot of effort into making Trani’s Dockside Station a true San Pedro standard-bearer, from the purveyors they choose to work with to the service staff that was hired. The restaurant’s general manager, Bart Thompson, noted that of the 140 applications he received for wait staff, 30 made the cut. Aside from skillsets and experience levels, they were evaluated based on their ties and connections to San Pedro.  

All of this was done with intention. With all the changes taking place in San Pedro, the only place that will continue to feel familiar on the waterfront is Trani’s Dockside Station and maybe the Ungaro family’s San Pedro Fish Market. But only time will tell.

Details: (310) 833-1188

Venue: Trani’s Dockside Station, 307 E. 22nd St., San Pedro