First at Spago: Celebrities and Regulars

Not long ago in this space, I published a catalogue of miscellaneous restaurant complaints from readers, together with my own comments on the issues they raised. This catalogue has encouraged a new spate of such letters, from which I will be publishing excerpts in coming weeks. To start things off, Mel Friedman of North Hollywood writes that when he complained at Spago one evening about being forced to wait while certain celebrities who came after him were seated immediately, he was told, “You are right. . . . It is our policy to seat celebrities and regulars ahead of others who have reservations, as many of you come here to ‘people-stare.’ ”

As I’ve noted before, virtually every commercial concern--from the dry cleaner to the veterinarian to the house of ill repute--gives preferential treatment to its regular customers; I don’t see anything wrong with restaurants doing it too. On the other hand, for a representative of a restaurant to blatantly tell a customer that celebrities are seated first and that he, as a non-celebrity customer, is probably just there to gawk in the first place seems to me both rude and, in public-relations terms, rather dim-witted. For the record, I should add that when I conveyed Friedman’s complaint to Tom Kaplan, Spago general manager, he responded, “I doubt that any of our people would have actually said that. We do give preferential treatment to our regulars, but it would have been incredibly off-base for one of our people to have said that to a customer. I tend to take it that maybe Mr. Friedman was just upset at being made to wait and perhaps interpreted something the wrong way.”

“WATER, WAITER!”: Citing an ordinance passed during the dry spell of 1977, and still officially on the books, the Los Angeles City Council has asked local restaurants not to serve water at tables unless specifically requested--this in response to current water shortages in the Sierra Nevadas. Frankly, I am surprised to learn that anybody in L.A. still drinks public water anyway. It’s been years since I’ve seen anyone in an eating place hereabouts quaffing anything but Ramlosa or Badoit.

CIAO, CHOW: Modesto Lanzone in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square has closed after 17 years of providing good Italian food and wine and great views of the Bay (from the front room, at least) to San Franciscans and tourists alike. Owner Lanzone himself cited poor business conditions for the restaurant’s demise. A second Modesto’s, opened in 1982 at Opera Plaza in downtown San Francisco, remains in business. . . . The Variety Grill, in our own downtown, which was mentioned by restaurant editor Ruth Reichl in her “First Impressions” column of March 4, didn’t stay around long enough to garner any second impressions. “We had purchased the business out of a bankruptcy late last year,” explained proprietor Stephen W. Lane, “but were dealt a severe blow with several undisclosed large bills. This rendered the continuity of operation impossible.” He plans to reopen later this year in Hollywood or West Hollywood, he said. . . . And Kathy Casey, former chef at Fuller’s in Seattle, who was hired recently by Warner LeRoy as chef at his Maxwell’s Plum in New York City, lasted in that post for only three weeks. One of Casey’s innovations in the Maxwell’s kitchen was the creation of triangular hamburgers--her way of dealing with LeRoy’s insistence that burgers remain on the menu. Her replacement at the restaurant is Geoffrey Zakarian, who has worked for the past year as head chef at New York’s revamped “21” Club under Alain Sailhac and Anne Rosenzweig. That particular august establishment, incidentally, is widely rumored to be for sale--and, according to the New York Times, Warner LeRoy himself has been offered a chance to buy the place, at a price in the neighborhood of $40 million (which LeRoy called “so far out that it wasn’t even realistic.”