It’s a Drag at Tommy Tang’s

Your waiter, Dan, is wearing a purple headdress, a black wig and a tasteful, slinky gown.

“It’s such a drag,” he says. “Every Tuesday I have to decide what to wear.”

A drag it literally is--every Tuesday night at Tommy Tang’s on Melrose Avenue, the hip Thai restaurant that recently introduced weekly drag nights.

It seems a timely move, with the success of “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and “Wigstock,” and even Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis reprising their ladies’ lingerie from “Some Like It Hot” for a recent issue of Vanity Fair.

Then there’s the upcoming release of “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar,” which will solidify the three-drag-queens-on-the-road genre by pouring Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze and John Leguizamo into cocktail dresses and four-inch heels.

Drag is in.

“Actually, it’s not much of a stretch for us,” says owner Sandra Tang, wife of Tommy. “Our audience is the same as it’s always been, but in wigs. All of my food servers except one have been drag queens, on their days off anyway.”

Tang’s partner in conceiving Tommy’s on Tuesday is Patrick Shooting Star, who works the room, ever the dashing host in a red Chinese smoking jacket with long silk tassels hanging from his wrists and Fu Manchu facial hair to match. “It took Patrick four months to coordinate the films and music and videos,” Tang says. “It’s all gender-bender artists and it’s absolutely so much fun.” In its fifth week, the evening already has a following.

The Tuesday drink menu (appropriately printed on hot, hot pink paper) offers about 20 “Gender Blenders” named after famous drag queens, any number of whom might actually be in the room. Order a “RuPaul” (cranberry juice, grapefruit juice and sake) or a “Linda Evangelipstick” (banana daiquiri with sake), or whatever color concoction matches your frock.

Like their namesakes, these cocktails are very glam. Some are spicy, some are blue, and several arrive at your table giving off smoke from under their paper umbrellas. Also like their namesakes, these cocktails are somewhat faux, since they’re made with sake, rather than the hard stuff.

For traditionalists, should any stumble in, it is possible to get a simple glass of premium sake served on the rocks with a twist by ordering the “Divine” (named after Tab Hunter’s co-star, not Hugh Grant’s playmate).

As the evening deepens, more and more fabulous creatures drift in, wafting on a sea of crinoline and crepe. There is a Valkyrie, a Phyllis Diller, many vamps and a couple of girls who are very, very late for the prom.

Helen Heels works the room, handing out flyers for a class she teaches on “the art of jewelry repairing, redesigning, redefining and recycling geared to the ‘larger-than-life’ woman of the ‘90s.” She is indeed larger than life, looking something like a cross between Barbara Bush and Babe the Blue Ox--a kind-looking monolith of a woman.

It’s late, and if you’re too full of sushi and sake when you roll out the door, you might not recognize Eva Destruction (her namesake drink is “Smoking Red Margarita, Double Sake”) slinking in disguised for the evening as her alter ego, Alexis Arquette.

Word is, even Kato Kaelin has been spotted here.

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Where: Tommy Tang’s, 7313 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (213) 937-5733.

When: Every Tuesday from 7:30 p.m. on.

Cost: Gender Blender cocktails, $3.50 to $8. Dinner, $6 to $20.