An Urban Roadhouse Rises in Los Feliz

One of the more unfortunate restaurant closings in Los Angeles in recent memory was that of the innovative La Petite Chaya on Hillhurst Avenue in the Los Feliz area late last year--a victim, as much as anything, of its out-of-the-trendy-mainstream location.

New restaurant life is about to be breathed into the old Petite Chaya premises, though, with local restaurant veterans Mark Carter and Stephanie Chiacos in charge.

Carter has worked most recently as pastry chef at Bernard’s and L’Ermitage; he started in the kitchen at Scandia and then was chef at the old Adagio on Melrose. Chiacos (she and Carter are married) has been a manager at both the Border Grill and City.

“We see ourselves as a well-trained mom and pop,” says Carter, adding that the restaurant they are planning, which will be called Duplex, will be “an urban roadhouse, where my ‘home cooking’ will be food the way a chef cooks for his friends.” An April opening is planned.

THEY DIDN’T GO FOR THE GUSTO: The new restaurant project being developed by Trumps owners Doug Delfeld, Jerry Singer and Gary Fowler in the Paseo del Mar complex in Santa Monica, next door to Ivy at the Shore, will no longer be called Gusto, as originally announced. The new name is Opera. The 130-seat restaurant (with half of that seating on an enclosed terrace), with Ron Smoire in charge of the kitchen, will feature “sunny cuisine,” in a space illuminated with “the colors and lights of the Mediterranean,” its proprietors now say. A full take-out bakery, selling everything from simple bread to fancy pastries, has been added to the plans. The restaurant expects to open its doors the last week of March.

NEW TABLES IN TOWN: The Wine Cellar Restaurant at the Newporter resort in Newport Beach has recently reopened, featuring a new menu developed in collaboration with Jean Banchet, the award-winning owner/chef of the renowned Le Francais in Wheeling, Ill., just outside Chicago. . . .

The Market City Caffe, specializing in antipasto, pasta, pizza and fresh fish, is new in Pasadena’s Old Town center. . . .

A “natural” fast-food restaurant, called Naturally Fast, naturally, has debuted on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles. . . .

And the admirable L.A. Eats in Venice, which has operated up to now as a take-out deli, has become a full-fledged cafe too. The fare is what the proprietors call “California Comfort Cooking,” which translates into such dishes as eggplant lasagna, buttermilk-fried chicken and hot turkey sandwiches with rosemary gravy. No beer or wine will be served until April.

EVENTS: Cafe Jacoulet in Pasadena offers a special wine dinner Monday night featuring the enological wares of the Napa Valley’s Raymond Winery. . . .

The Parkway Grill, also in Pasadena, hosts guest chef Dean Fearing of the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas Tuesday through Thursday. Fearing will be preparing dishes from his new “The Mansion on Turtle Creek Cookbook”--among them, warm lobster tacos with yellow tomato salsa, oysters with pecan crust on a jicama tortilla and wood-grilled sirloin steak with pickled baby corn, three-onion spoon bread and “Granny Fearing’s Baked Turtle Beans.” . . .

La Masia in West Hollywood celebrates Mardi Gras a week late with a costume party and live music on Wednesday and Thursday. . . .

And the speaker Saturday at the Market Street Series at 72 Market Street in Venice will be noted architect Frank Gehry (one of whose many local works, of course, is the interior of Rebecca’s, just down the street). Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Admission is $30 per person and reservations are essential.

TABLE TALK: Kathy Casey, long noted for her imaginative food (and her even more imaginative earrings) at Fuller’s in the Sheraton Hotel in Seattle, has taken on the executive chef’s job at Maxwell’s Plum in New York. . . . Our own L’Orangerie announced that it has become a member of the prestigious international Relais & Chateau group, and that it is offering a new menu to celebrate the association. . . . Antonio’s on Melrose, the city’s first really innovative Mexican restaurant, announces that it is about to open a second location, on Montana in Santa Monica. . . .

DETAILS: In mentioning the recent appointment of Axel Dikkers as the new chef at Camelions in Santa Monica a few weeks back, I wrote that he had been sous chef at the Regency Club and chef at Jimmy’s. “As kitchen titles and positions seem to be so important these days,” Dikkers has since written to me, “I thought I would point out that I was sous chef at the Regency Club for three years, and then executive chef there for nearly two years before going briefly to Jimmy’s.”

And speaking of Camelions, that establishment’s former chef, Elka Gilmore, now chef and co-owner of Tumbleweed in Beverly Hills, was grand-prize winner of the 1988 California Seafood Challenge cookoff held in late January at Catherine’s--A Champagne Bistro. Gilmore, who also took the top prize at last year’s Seafood Challenge, will represent California in a national competition, facing chefs from 31 other states, in Charleston, S.C., March 3-5.