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The Farmer’s Daughter Hotel is a down-home oasis in LA

The sign for the Farmer's Daughter Hotel in Los Angeles.James Reed/Globe Staff

It sounded like hollow praise, but I meant it.

“This is the best check-in I’ve ever had at a hotel,” I told the receptionist at the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel as he handed me a room key. He nodded and understood what I meant.

Within five minutes of pulling up to the valet, I was carrying my overnight bag in one hand and balancing a little glass of bourbon and a warm chocolate chip cookie in the other. The booze was from a tasting offered to guests in the lobby.

I walked to my room, the mysteriously named No Tell Room, and both gasped and laughed as the door swung open. Why, yes, that would be a mirrored ceiling above the bed, which was fitted with a tightly tucked denim bedspread and matching throw pillows. On the facing wall was a mural of amber waves of grain with a blue sky looming in the distance.

See, what they don’t tell you about the No Tell Room, of which there is only one, is that you’ll want to tell everyone about it. It was such a kooky surprise that it made me wonder: Am I still in Los Angeles?

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Since the 1960s, the Farmer’s Daughter Hotel has been a cheeky oasis in LA’s landscape of accommodations. It’s a boutique hotel with honky-tonk character and a storied, and sometimes seedy, past. Located in the Fairfax District, across from the CBS studios, once upon a time it was abuzz with tourists, celebrities, and television executives.

The No Tell Room is a cheeky sendup of honky-tonk chic.James Reed/Globe Staff

By the mid-’90s, it had fallen on hard times, known more as a “no-tell motel” for pimps and prostitutes who rented rooms by the week. Ellen Picataggio’s parents originally purchased it in 1997 as an investment property, and two years later she and her future husband, Peter, began the first of two renovations to not just bring it back to life, but back to a whole new clientele.

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“In a town like LA, where image is everything, we go a little bit against the grain,” says Picataggio. “And I think that’s why we’re still a little bit of a hidden gem, even though we tend to get great press. We have a lot of interesting people who stay here, but it’s not a see-and-be-seen kind of place. The main point is to relax and have a nice time.”

So often a chic hotel will reek of pretension or the designer’s overbearing vision. Not so at the Farmer’s Daughter; it lets you see some of the seams. Entering from the valet parking area, you walk through a narrow hallway festooned with illuminated marquee lights and an Art-O-Mat vending machine that dispenses artwork. Framed needlepoint with folk wisdom (“Home Sweet Home”) hangs slightly askew along the yellow, rooster-print wallpaper.

James Reed/Globe Staff

Right off the reception area is a small pool in the shade of intoxicating blue they seem to conjure only in California. Oversized rubber duckies drift in the placid water until families eventually show up.

Sixty-six rooms unfurl over three floors in a squat, motel-style setting. More renovations are underway, including plans to open up the lobby, but Picataggio says they’re mostly done for now.

In keeping with the hotel’s theme, its restaurant, Tart, puts an upscale and delicious spin on Southern comfort food, from hush puppies and crispy Brussels sprouts with an egg to chicken and waffles and braised short rib. (In a previous incarnation under another name, the restaurant was known to attract such luminaries as Madonna and Herbie Hancock.)

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You could easily make a night out of staying on site, but there’s a lot happening around the hotel. Across the street is the Farmers Market, which is, in fact, not a produce extravaganza. Dating to the 1930s, it’s a quaint tourist trap, an old-school assortment of restaurants, shops, and grocers, with cuisine globetrotting from France to New Orleans to Korea. There is fantastic Mexican fare at Lotería Grill, where the fresh fruit waters and the enfrijoladas (corn tortillas smothered in a black-bean sauce) are exceptional.

Just beyond the Farmers Market is the Grove, a shopping and entertainment complex full of stores, fountains, and patrons. Like an outdoor mall, it’s rather artificial and feels a long way from the down-home comforts back at the Farmer’s Daughter.

“People either get us or they don’t,” Picataggio says. “The point for us was to get the balance right between kooky and relaxed. There’s a sophistication, but it’s really not worn on the sleeve. We’re more subtle, and I think people understand that’s what we’re about.”

FARMER’S DAUGHTER HOTEL 115 South Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. Rooms start at $209, packages available. 323-937-3930, farmersdaughterhotel.com


James Reed can be reached at james.reed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeJamesReed.