The team that started the popular club Fuel is planning a makeover for the nigthspot, capitalizing on Hollywood’s increasing cache and making it the ‘hardest door in L.A.’

For a couple of South African natives, Alan Nathan and Anton Posniak sure have a handle on the Hollywood tradition of making the scene.

Nathan and Posniak, the two principals in a spreading enterprise that includes Tengu sushi restaurant and jumping night spot Fuel, have big designs on becoming the prime purveyors of pomp and prestige in Hollywood.

“Hollywood right now is at the forefront of something wonderful,” Nathan said. “Like in New York or Chicago, Hollywood Boulevard will be the first place ever in L.A. where you can get dropped off and have your pick of a dozen or more places to go.”

The partners are making their contribution to the momentum in Hollywood that is beginning to bloom into a full-blown renaissance. Although their sushi bar Tengu is in Westwood, they promise to open one in Hollywood. And their nightclub Fuel, at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue, already is one of the toughest doors in the neighborhood.

Though both South African Nathan was born in Johannesburg and Posniak in Cape Town they didn’t meet until the mid-’80s in high school in San Diego. Their route to the top tier of L.A. nightlife is as much a story of wanderlust as persistence and networking.

After graduating from high school in 1987, Nathan, the elder of the two by three years, decided college was not for him and took off for Europe. Upon returning stateside, he sold sheepskin seat covers at swap meets, finally changing his mind about college and enrolling at USC where, as he puts it, he pursued a double major in business and socializing.

For a year, he did nothing but go to bars and meet people and watch the way things ran. Even when he scored an internship with investment banking company Bear Stearns & Co. he still was going out every night and somehow managing to get up at 5:30 each morning for work.

“Finally,” he said, “I thought to myself, ‘I’m going out every night, why not make money at it?'”

During that period, Posniak finished high school and moved to Japan to pursue judo and Asian culture. Like Nathan, he returned to the United States and enrolled in college, at UCLA and later at UC Berkeley, where he finished a degree in Asian studies and Japanese history.

Rough start

The pair reunited in 1997 and got their start when they were hired to fill Orsini’s, a nightclub on Pico Boulevard in Beverly Hills, on Monday nights with events such as “Ladies’ Night.”

“We lasted three weeks,” Nathan said. “The fourth week we probably had my family that came up from San Diego and 10 friends. We got loaded and that was our last night.”

That humbling beginning taught the two young men the key to the business: networking. They started hitting the modeling agencies and seeking out L.A.’s socialites “the kids who have money and don’t do anything but go out,” according to Nathan.

In choosing a location for their first venture, Posniak persuaded Nathan that Westwood would be an OK place to do business while they searched for an opportunity in Hollywood. The two endured a grueling experience with the city of Los Angeles before finally opening in December 1999.

“They saw us as two young kids coming to Westwood to run a fly-by-night operation,” Posniak said.

Ultimately, they got the go-ahead barely. The city allowed them to serve only until 11 p.m. and only inside. Since then, the city has expanded Tengu’s license to allow the restaurant to stay open until 2 a.m. and seat guests outside.

Feeling like they’ve fine-tuned their restaurant concept, Nathan and Posniak are hunting for locations to open two more Tengus, one likely in Hollywood.

Teresa Holden, director of sales and marketing for the W Hotel in Westwood, said that Nathan and Posniak’s approach to restaurants makes Tengu a winner.

“It’s fun. There’s nothing stuffy about it,” she said. “It has a higher energy level than a lot of other restaurants.”

It doesn’t hurt that as hosts and instigators of the party, Nathan and Posniak carry themselves well.

“They’re good-looking guys and have a well-defined sense of style,” Holden said. “I know they have an extraordinary passion for what they’re doing.”

And anyone who hasn’t checked out Fuel better try to get in quickly because this summer it will be expanded and turned into a pre-Castro Cuba bar called Nacional.

Kinder, gentler exclusivity

Modeled on the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, Nacional will bring to Los Angeles a Cuban culture that Nathan considers the “last forbidden fruit” for Americans. Nathan and Posniak promise to make Nacional the “hardest door in L.A.” But don’t suggest they’re being exclusive. What they mean, Posniak said, is if you’re with a bunch of guys pumping fists in the air “aggressive and hungry,” you’ve no chance of getting in.

“A guy and a girl dressed nice out for a good time? No problem,” he said.

And if you’re not on the list and it’s just not your night, Nathan promises a kinder and gentler snub.

“There’s an art to it, too,” he said. “The door guy who says no to you still smiles.”

“If you’re a (jerk) and treat someone like they don’t mean anything, that ruins their night,” Posniak said.

Holden said that attitude reflects Nathan and Posniak’s tendency to take their business personally. When Holden missed the grand opening party at Tengu, to which the entire Westwood business community had been invited, Posniak visited her personally and invited her to come in for dinner on the house.

“It was a good business step to take, but it also felt very neighborly,” she said.

While they are launching Nacional, the pair will join forces with partner Eric Weitzman to open a 14,000-square-foot nightclub at Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue. Weitzman plans to open a restaurant on the second floor. Together, the nightclub and restaurant will provide what the partners describe as the city’s largest space, outside of warehouses, for private parties and corporate events. With enough room for up to 2,000 people, the still-unnamed venue will seek to tap into the private party market that Nathan and Posniak believe can generate as much as $1.5 million during the December holiday season alone.

Nathan and Posniak plan to be around when Hollywood once again becomes the hopping scene of legend. They consider it their calling, really.

“We’re still at a point in our lives where we enjoy entertaining people,” Nathan said.

“I like to think of us as entertainment brokers,” Posniak concurred. “There’s 300 people (in a club), and they’re smiling and there’s energy and it’s there because of you. There’s nothing like it. It’s our outlet as artists. Our way of expressing ourselves is creating a venue.”