The 14-week television and movie writers’ strike that rocked Los Angeles in 2007 cost the local economy an estimated $1 billion or more in lost wages and entertainment revenues.

It also spawned an Echo Park restaurant where you can get $8 plates of fresh salmon, cooked on cedar planks no less.

The place is called Allston Yacht Club, though it is nowhere near the bohemian Boston neighborhood for which it is named and has nothing to do with yachts.

“It’s tongue-in-cheek,” explained Bill DiDonna, 50, who owns the restaurant with his 53-year-old business partner, Charlie Kelly. “Back when we lived in Allston, a friend said that all it needed was a yacht club and the neighborhood would be perfect, so we decided to create one ourselves.”

That decision came during the writers’ strike when the two college friends were thrown out of work. Both had been successful sound technicians for more than two decades, working on movie and TV productions such as “Apollo 13”; Bruce Willis’ “Striking Distance”; and “Kindred Spirits,” an Aaron Spelling series for Fox.

When the writers stopped working, however, all the productions ceased.

“That’s when our idle conversations about food and wine and doing a restaurant suddenly became immediate,” said DiDonna who, like Kelly, worked as a waiter in his youth.

The result is the 14-table restaurant open since January in an Echo Park Avenue building they purchased that includes four apartments, which supplement their income stream. The pair received a line of credit to open the business.

Despite its seafood-sounding name, however, the Allston Yacht Club is not all about fish. Inspired, in part, by the economic recession, it offers eclectic a la carte dishes for $8 or less.

Aside from the salmon, the menu includes Merquez sausage, pork belly, duck breast, Vietnamese flavored chicken skewers and an octopus snack.

So far, the former soundmen said, business has been touch-and-go, with the restaurant open Tuesday through Saturday evenings. They plan to open for Sunday brunch soon.

“There’s an erratic nature to it,” said DiDonna. “Sometimes we’re wildly busy and sometimes we’re not. I guess that’s the nature of a startup.”

They do admit one regret after finding the No. 1 question among patrons is about the restaurant’s name. “If we could do it all over again,” DiDonna sighed, “we’d just call it Charlie and Bill’s.”