The man behind Patina's curtain

By Corie Brown

Oct. 22, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

One cook struggles to strain a 50-gallon pot of beef stock while another turns dozens of zucchini strips on the grill. Ten other cooks scurry about preparing test meals as Joachim Splichal walks into the kitchen at the new Patina in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

No one looks up. If anything, they hunker down, intent on appearing competent in a state-of-the-art kitchen they are only just getting to know.The celebrated chef and notorious kitchen tyrant is back working the line, making sure the new Patina hits the right note. His staff knows that means the standards will be exacting, the pressure intense. The opening is days away, on Tuesday.

“We have to be very, very careful we make all of the right decisions from a food standpoint,” Splichal says. “When we start off, start very slowly. My first meal will only have 40 people, I don’t care who calls.”

Actually, the pressure already is intense. Splichal, 49, stunned the food world when he announced last month that he was moving the restaurant that made his reputation, the foundation of his empire, from its tucked-away Melrose Avenue location to a downtown space bathed in spotlights.

He didn’t say that the old Patina is dead. But with a new room, new chef, new sommelier, new menu and new hours, too little of the old Patina remains to argue the point.

Yet, as the shock wore off, the transformation seemed a natural next step for the culinary entrepreneur, a prevalent force in downtown L.A. who made himself Southern California’s cultural concessionaire.

The German-born, French-trained chef now has two restaurants at the Los Angeles Music Center -- Patina and Kendall’s -- as well as its cafes and banquet facilities. Two million people a year are expected to visit the Music Center’s four theaters.

That’s on top of the meals he serves at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hollywood Bowl, Bowers Museum, Descanso Gardens and Norton Simon Museum.

His other downtown restaurants -- Cafe Pinot, Zucca and Nick & Stef’s Steakhouse -- form a chain of some of the best food available in the city’s financial district, without the ambitions -- or critical acclaim -- of Patina.

The explosive growth didn’t happen by accident. Almost as soon as Patina won raves, Splichal the chef began to morph into Splichal the businessman.

Now, with the new Patina, he’s come full circle, saying it’s time to return to the kitchen.

New risk

For 14 years, Patina, Splichal’s flagship restaurant, has jockeyed for preeminence among L.A.’s best dining experiences. Moving Patina to a space born to grab the attention of the world will not be easy.

“Patina has a lot of baggage,” says Splichal, a small man whose intensity makes him a feared presence in his kitchens. His face lights up with an impish grin. “Expectations are high. It’s important for me to pick up a pan, to help.”

The risk is worth it, he says. Disney Hall has “a tremendous amount of prestige. It will be the building in Los Angeles for a long time, drawing a tremendous amount of tourists.”

Splichal doesn’t want the new Patina to mimic the original. While both places were designed by Hagy Belzberg, the new room is brighter, lighter -- a showplace. It is wrapped in a curtain milled from solid walnut and topped with a wiggle wood ceiling. A bamboo wall obscures the street view, bringing privacy to the corner.

While other top L.A. chefs flocked to the upscale Westside, Splichal and his wife and front-of-the-house partner, Christine, staked their claim east of La Brea Boulevard.

By design, Splichal chose areas where he didn’t compete with his rival, Wolfgang Puck. Between them, the two chefs dominate L.A. catering. But Puck grabbed national attention with his television appearances and a ubiquitous brand name. Splichal focused on Southern California, with his chain of restaurants and the cafes in cultural venues.

Splichal built his dining empire on the strength of Patina, a restaurant launched on a shoestring budget in the wake of a financial disaster -- culinary sensation Max au Triangle.

Max made him a legend. Then-Los Angeles Times food critic Ruth Reichl raved about his “completely original dishes” that featured rarely seen items like cockscombs. “Eating Splichal’s food is like going on a little treasure hunt, for this is a cuisine of constant discovery.”

The restaurant’s finances, however, rested in the hands of its backers. Max closed in two years, a personal blow that makes Splichal wince to this day. The lesson has guided him ever since. If he doesn’t have control, he doesn’t do it.

After suffering such a bruising failure, Splichal had to cut corners to maintain control of his next project: Patina.

The building was small and nondescript, the kitchen tiny and under-equipped. The whole thing, including the wine cellar, cost $635,000, a stake raised from investors who bought shares at $25,000 each.

“You had to come in early and hide all of your stuff,” recalls Warren Schwartz, a former Patina cook, now chef at Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas. There were never enough pans, ladles or knives.

The ingredients, however, were top shelf. “Truffle juice was his favorite. He used it in vinaigrettes, butter sauces, everything. Even at $30 a can, he went through it like no tomorrow,” Schwartz says.

‘Had to be perfect’

Pity the chef who didn’t know how to play food purveyors against each other, Schwartz says. “Nothing less than top quality would do, and he wanted it for less money.”

Splichal felt the same way about his cooks, paying less than other top restaurants in town, say chefs who passed through his kitchen. Working for Splichal taught you how to survive.

“He would scream his head off to get you to meet his intensity,” Schwartz says. “People hid alcohol and beer all around the kitchen, to cope. There were fist marks on the walk-in door from people punching it in frustration.”

But it was worth it, Schwartz and other Patina alumni say.

“The food had to be perfect. He wouldn’t accept anything else,” says Josiah Citrin, who went on to open Jiraffe and Melisse in Santa Monica. “It was an intense adrenaline rush. It was what I needed.”

Splichal launched Patina Catering in 1991 and opened Pinot Bistro in the San Fernando Valley in 1992, but it was the contract to take over MOCA’s food service in 1994 that gave the already white-hot chef the grand vision for Patina Group.

Downtown Los Angeles was a drag. MOCA was a cultural island. The restaurant scene was a desert. “We wanted to elevate MOCA’s food,” says Richard Koshalek, who then ran the museum and is now president of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Koshalek asked Splichal to reinvent the cafe.

Splichal instantly saw the strategy for building a catering juggernaut. “I thought it never could make any money just with the cafe,” Splichal says. “But the exposure for the catering company would be just incredible. All those wealthy people are part of the museum.”

From then on, he pursued every museum and performing arts food service contract that came up. With each, he added chefs, waiters and pot scrubbers who could be part of his catering team just as he made connections with wealthy Angelenos who needed his services.

“When you go to European museums, there is a certain sophistication of food. I felt we didn’t have that in Los Angeles,” Splichal says. “We are a Los Angeles company. We live here. Our children grow up here. We use the museums like other people.”

That pitch won Splichal the $2-million-a-year LACMA food-service contract in 1999. “We chose Patina because the quality was terrific. We all knew his food. And the company was based three streets over. Splichal had been a corporate member of the museum, someone genuinely interested in the arts,” says Melody Kanschat, senior vice president of operations. “Joachim’s personal involvement -- none of the other food-service companies had that.”

“I was very aggressive with LACMA,” Splichal says. “If we ever wanted to merge or sell Patina Group, we need those venues. Large food companies don’t understand the restaurant business, but they understand catering and museums and performing arts centers. It was why we went after them hard.”

After the deal closed, Splichal made headlines by selling his then-10-year-old empire to New York-based Restaurant Associates for $40 million -- pocketing nearly $30 million -- one of the biggest paydays any chef has ever enjoyed. The balance went to his investors, who have always fared well, which eased Splichal’s rise to power. Splichal signed a five-year contract to run Patina Group.

Bankrolled by Restaurant Associates’ $16.7-billion multinational parent corporation, Compass Group, Splichal kicked into even higher gear, adding restaurants in Downtown Disney, Zucca, the food service at the Hollywood Bowl and at several other public arts venues. Splichal inherited Restaurant Associates’ food service contract at the Music Center.

Howard Sherman, the Music Center’s vice president of operations, says Splichal’s food was a revelation. “He brought a standard and recognition for the center. The catering was more creative. The menus in the restaurants all suddenly had his flair. He raised the bar.”

When it came time to create Disney Hall’s restaurant, Sherman says they looked no further than Splichal. “It was a difficult deal because a lot of money was on the table,” says Sherman. Compass ultimately committed more than $8 million to build the Disney Hall restaurant and cafe, as well as to overhaul Kendall’s (formerly Otto’s) and other food facilities.

A sticking point was the new restaurant. “We wanted it to be Patina quality, not the Pinot restaurants,” Sherman says.

But when Splichal started planning to add a second top establishment, the pressure proved overwhelming. “The food is too sophisticated to have two Patinas. It’s hard to run one,” he says. Hitting the gastronomic high notes that made Patina famous in the context of a public performing arts hall is a feat rarely attempted, much less accomplished. Moreover, there is no blueprint for Patina’s food.

The menu has always been ever-changing, Splichal says, even though the culinary style has stayed the same -- highly constructed, contemporary French with a touch of California eclecticism and a lot of truffles and foie gras.

“The sensibility is still very high-end food using labor-intensive, high-end ingredients. Nothing has changed,” says Splichal, hesitating and then adding, “maybe the direction of the food is changing a little bit.”

One kitchen, two cooks

That “little bit” will be determined by Patina’s new executive chef, Theo Schoenegger, a northern Italian who was executive chef at San Domenico in New York.

“It will be my kitchen, under Joachim’s guidance,” Schoenegger says diplomatically. The two have been hammering out the menu for months -- at first, trying to construct “architectural food” in honor of Frank Gehry. Then giving up on that idea.

The highlight, Splichal says, will be an $85 prix-fixe ocean menu featuring sauteed blue prawns on creamy polenta, celery root emulsion and black truffles, along with a wild salmon filet course and one with black sea bass with zucchini flower, cockles and saffron risotto.

Wild game -- a Patina signature -- figures prominently among the new dishes, including slow-roasted venison loin with a foie gras-porcini-polenta napoleon and huckleberry relish. Another item is seared loin of hare with chestnut spaetzle, pear and cranberry relish and bitter chocolate sauce.

Splichal’s favorite embellishment is a caviar cart that will raise the profile of one of the most expensive menu items. “It will be a mix of American, Russian and Iranian caviar, great for after theater with Champagne,” he says. It’s a savvy lure for a late-night crowd, something no serious restaurant in Los Angeles has been able to bank on.

With the new Patina, an aggressive expansion plan is complete, Splichal says. Revenues for the group are estimated to more than double to a projected $96 million for 2004. Separately, last year, Christine Splichal opened the West Hollywood day spa, Kinara.

“I’m getting back out in the culinary field, back into the restaurants,” Splichal says, noting that after Patina is on its feet, he’ll spend more time at all of the other restaurants and less time in the office.

The shift is part of a lifestyle overhaul he began last winter after he suffered a transient ischemic attack (loss of blood flow to the brain): “I was too scared to look up what it was. You feel like you are gone. It changed the way I look at things, how many hours I spend working.”

The Patina Group can manage future expansion without his day-to-day input, he says. He wants more time to coach soccer for his 7-year-old twins.

And there is the vineyard he wants to buy, a perfect little place he’s scouted out in Provence.

“It’s what I said I really want to do,” Splichal recalls. “Maybe now I will have the time.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How it grew

It started with a single L.A. restaurant -- Patina -- in 1989 and grew into an empire. First, Joachim Splichal added a catering business. Then he started boxing classy dinners for the Hollywood Bowl. Next he went California casual and opened Pinot Bistro and so on until his reach included 16 restaurants, plus 14 cafes at cultural venues and shopping malls. Splichal’s company, the Patina Group, was bought by Restaurant Associates in 1999 for $40 million. Here’s what the Patina Group is today:

At the Los Angeles Music Center

Patina: The group’s flagship restaurant, at the Walt Disney Concert Hall

Kendall’s Brasserie: To open mid-November

Pinot Grill: Salads and grilled entrees on the plaza

The Fifth Floor: Buffet in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion

Concert Hall Cafe: Sandwiches, salads and snacks at Walt Disney Concert Hall

At the Hollywood Bowl

Rooftop Grill: Cafe for pre-performance dining

The Marketplace: Picnic supplies, including hot and cold entrees, sushi and caviar

Staccato: Take-out fare

At cultural centers

Patinette Cafe: Sandwich bar at Museum of Contemporary Art