A REAL SAGA OF RESTAURANT CHAIRS
Some of the most interesting restaurants in California are about to change hands--again.
They were all started by a couple of guys who simply fell in love with the then-venerable Chianti 16 years ago. Neither knew very much about the restaurant business, but they were both looking for a new career and they decided to buy the restaurant. Their lack of experience was a problem, and at first it looked as if the venture was going to fail.
It didn’t. Chianti turned into a rousing success, and Laurence B. Mindel and Jerry Magnin (who in another incarnation is a Beverly Hills clothier) went on to found Spectrum Foods. They were known for their creativity, their good management and the fact that their restaurants were never made to fit into a corporate mold. (What other corporation would employ someone with the title of “Maestro”?) Together, they created Harry’s Bar and American Grill, Prego (in Beverly Hills, Irvine and San Francisco), MacArthur Park (in Huntington Beach, San Francisco and Menlo Park), and three or four other equally imaginative and usually very good restaurants around California.
In 1984, Mindel and Magnin sold Spectrum to Saga Corp. for a reported $16 million and, with Magnin voluntarily limiting himself to a consultant’s role, Mindel quickly rose up the Saga corporate ladder.
Now it gets a little complicated. Two months ago, Marriott Corp. bought Saga, probably to get its hands on the firm’s $773-million-a-year contract food service operations. Marriott let it be known that it wasn’t particularly interested in Saga’s restaurant holdings (which, in addition to Spectrum, include the Stuart Anderson’s, Velvet Turtle and Straw Hat Pizza chains). Mindel and Magnin had been under the impression that Marriott would sell Spectrum back to them; instead, the company added Spectrum to a still-pending $275-million buy-out deal for the Saga restaurants proposed by Anwar S. Soliman, former chief executive of the restaurant division of the W. R. Grace Corp., one of Saga’s longtime rivals. Until now, Mindel has remained at his post, while making no bones about his “open hostility” to the potential Soliman takeover.
An article on the matter in a recent issue of the top trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News noted that some Spectrum executives and employees had expressed their own concern about Soliman, and Mindel was quoted as saying, “They all want to leave.”
But last week Mindel said: “I hope my departure won’t have any effect. If there are mass defections, then I won’t have built the organization I think I’ve built.” He did add, though, that “it’s going to be a new ball game” for the Spectrum restaurants under Soliman’s leadership.
His own plans, Mindel said, were to “try to take the rest of the year off to examine all the exciting opportunities out there.” On the other hand, he said: “I’m more than just a little melancholy. It’s no fun to be leaving.”
USING THE OLD NOODLE: Emilio’s in Hollywood offers “pasta grazings” tonight and next Sunday from 5:30 to 8 in honor of National Pasta Month, which is right now . The grazings will include antipasto, three or four pastas, dessert and cappuccino at $16 per person. For the record, Emilio’s was recently named one of L.A.’s 11 “Pasta Restaurants of the Year” by the National Pasta Assn. along with Angeli, Pronto, Via Fettuccine, Carmelo’s, La Famiglia, Rex, Valentino, Adriano’s, Antonello and La Scala. . . . Late-night pasta is now available, from 10:30 to 12:30, at Romeo and Juliet in Beverly Hills (with the noodles themselves supplied by the venerable L.A.-based Costa Macaroni Co.). . . . Prego in Irvine stages a Festa della Vendemmia or Grape Harvest Festival next Sunday in its outdoor courtyard, including genuine grape-stomping, music and, of course, food and wine. Tax-deductible $35 tickets will benefit Orange County’s Marden Center, which helps children with learning disabilities.
FUN FOOD FAX: The second annual Venice-Marina Wine & Food Fair is scheduled next Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. at the new Marina Beach Hotel in Marina del Rey. Roughly 40 wineries and 20 restaurants will participate. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door, and proceeds will go to the Venice-Marina Rotary Foundation Scholarship Fund. Information: (213) 458-3388 weekdays and (213) 399-4526 evenings and weekends. . . . The American Institute of Wine & Food has scheduled its next National Conference on Gastronomy Nov. 6-9 at the Hotel Crescent Court in Dallas. Chefs Wolfgang Puck, Jacques Pepin, Gerard Pangaud, Mark Miller and Stephan Pyles, and authors Hugh Johnson, Julia Child, Calvin Trillin and Richard Olney will be among the participants, and programs will be devoted to such subjects as “Food in French Culture.” Information: (415) 362-0745. . . . The West End Restaurant in Brentwood has added a page of “Meatless Entrees” to its menu. . . . Cafe Cordiale in Sherman Oaks has opened for Saturday lunch and Sunday brunch. . . . Cassola’s Fish House in Marina del Rey now serves a special $10.95 “Sunset Dinner”--and to make the deal sweeter still, the price includes a certificate good for a lunch, brunch or dinner of equal value on a future visit. . . . Gourmet Gourmet in Tarzana is tempting fate with an “all-you-can-eat gourmet pizza night” Sundays and Mondays, priced at $5 per person. . . . Gaylord Restaurant of India in Beverly Hills has added a grazer’s menu sampler to its regular selection of dishes. . . .L.A. Weekly restaurant critic Karen Kaplan begins an eight-session UCLA Extension program, “Evenings With Los Angeles Chefs and Restaurants,” Monday night. Ken Frank, Michael McCarty, Michael Roberts, Piero Selvaggio and Roy Yamaguchi will be among the guests. Information: (213) 206-8120. . . . Another UCLA Extension program, the fifth annual Restaurant and Hotel Design Symposium, sits Friday and Saturday at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Universal City. Information: (213) 825-9061. . . . Madame Wu’s Garden in Santa Monica celebrates its 26th anniversary Oct. 27 with a special $75 prix fixe dinner to benefit Msgr. John Mayo’s St. John’s School in Taiwan. (The restaurant’s first benefit, 26 years ago, was to help rebuild St. John’s church, which had been destroyed by fire. ) The event also honors Madame Wu’s chef, Tuck Man Ng, who has been with the restaurant since it opened, and introduces new Executive Chef Denise Wong--who might just be, says Madame Wu, the only female executive chef in a major Chinese restaurant in the world.
CHANGES: There will be a couple of restaurants in a forthcoming upscale three-story shopping center on Ventura Boulevard in North Hollywood--but the bad news is that the Tail O’ the Cock, which stands on the site now, will not be one of them. The landmark restaurant, which has survived its sibling on La Cienega by a couple of years, will remain open through the holidays and close down in early spring, permanently.
