Handling an Unanswered Complaint

Attorney Maurice A. Hart of Los Angeles writes that he called 72 Market Street in Venice last January to reserve a table for four at 7:30 on a Friday evening. He made the call three weeks ahead of time. Arriving on time, he and his guests, among them an important client of his, were seated at a small table in the middle of the bar area--and told that tables in the main restaurant had all been reserved.

As the restaurant filled, Hart reports, the bar became increasingly crowded, to the extent that he and his guests were jostled by bar patrons and found conversation all but impossible. Even the waiter and busboy, he says, had a hard time pushing through the assembled multitude to serve the table. Hart was so understandably disappointed and embarrassed, that he subsequently wrote to the restaurant to voice his complaint. He has not, to this date, received a reply.

Hart doesn’t say whether or not he told the restaurant in advance that the occasion was to be an important one--something I would always recommend doing in such cases, incidently, whether the importance is personal or professional in nature. But even if he didn’t, there is no excuse for an establishment to give a less-than-desirable table to a customer who reserves three weeks in advance. Neither is there any excuse, of course, for a restaurant not to reply to a customer’s complaint--whether or not they think it has any merit.

Julie Stone, operating owner of 72 Market Street, remembers having received Hart’s letter. “The thing is,” she explains, “we never guarantee any specific seating to anybody. We do take requests, but we can’t always honor them. We are a very small restaurant doing a very big business, and both sections of the restaurant are usually crowded, especially on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I can understand how some people would find the front room more irritating, because it’s so close to the bar and oyster bar, and people come and go a lot more than they do further in. On the other hand, we have people who actually prefer to sit there. I’m certainly sorry, though, that Mr. Hart didn’t feel better taken care of.”

Stone apologizes for not having replied to Hart’s letter, too. “I try so hard to answer any correspondence we get, positive or negative,” she says. “But sometimes one or two just slip by. As a matter of fact, I’m behind in answering a couple of letters right now, and they’re just burning a hole in my desk.”

GREAT DEALS: The Pelican’s Nest in Santa Monica celebrates its 10th anniversary “through at least June and possibly July” with a complete live main lobster dinner (or lunch)--Monday through Friday only--at $14.95 per person. . . . Al’s Steak House and Saloon in Santa Ana offers 20% discounts daily to customers 55 and over. . . . The Beef and Barrel in Northridge now serves a Sunday brunch buffet for $7.95 a head, and offers a special luncheon menu for bridal or baby showers at $10 per showerer. . . . And Ho Toy’s in Sherman Oaks invites patrons to join its No Sales Tax Club. Ho Toy’s itself will pay the tax when members dine at the place, and also offers members a chance to win a complimentary dinner for two, awarded weekly.

WHAT’S UP: Opera--the work of Trumps principals Doug Delfeld, Jerry Singer and Gary Fowler--has just opened in Santa Monica. Claude Koeberle (formerly of Les Anges, L’Orangerie and Tamayo, among other places) and Debbie Slutsky (who helped open Mark Miller’s noted Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe and our own Hamlet Gardens) are in the kitchen with Spectrum Foods veteran Steve Grant as general manager. . . . Bryan Carr is the new chef at Montecito’s San Ysidro Ranch, recently purchased by San Francisco Bay Area restaurateur and hotel owner Claude Rouas. . . . Chartreuse in West Los Angeles closed for good yesterday, after nine years under Chef Bruno Moeckli’s ownership. The pretty little free-standing brick building it occupied fails to meet local earthquake-preparedness requirements, and so had to be abandoned. Moeckli is looking for a new location, he says, or a chef’s position with another restaurant. . . . Bridge Creek, which opened in Berkeley in 1985 as a mostly breakfast place (with recipe advice from noted Morning Meal authority Marion Cunningham) and then all but abandoned breakfast and tried serving lunch and dinner instead, has also closed. . . .

SPECIALS OF THE HOUSE: Executive chef Nick Dockmonish demonstrates Franco-Japanese cuisine this afternoon at 2 p.m. at the New Otani Hotel & Garden downtown. The class, to be conducted in both English and Japanese (but not French), costs $15. . . . Floreale, the restaurant in the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Long Beach, features the wines of Wente Bros. in a winemaker dinner this Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The price is $50 a piece, including tax and tip. . . . The same evening, at six, El Cholo on Western Avenue welcomes back their legendary green corn tamales with a special $35 prix fixe dinner, including music and margaritas. . . . Colette, in the Beverly Pavilion Hotel in Beverly Hills, asks $60 for a five-course dinner, on June 2, washed down by the wines of Sterling Vineyards (including their excellent 1983 reserve Cabernet). . . . Some 35 Southland chefs, many of them from hotels, catering companies or corporate kitchens, will collaborate on the 8-course “Le Grand Diner III” next Saturday. The event, sponsored by the Scopus Society of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, will benefit that Jerusalem-based institution’s scholarship fund. Call Melissa Monaco at (213) 657-6511 for further information. . . . And L’Ermitage, on La Cienega in West Hollywood, celebrates Provence with a special a la carte menu of provencal dishes, offered in addition to the regular menu from June 6 through 9.

ZAGAT CAME BACK: It’s Zagat Los Angeles Restaurant Survey time again. Send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Zagat Survey, 2226 Moreno Drive, Los Angeles 90039, and you will receive a copy of the Zagat L.A. restaurant questionnaire by return mail. Fill it out and send it back by June 15, and you will receive a copy of the Zagat guide when it’s published this fall. You’ll also be able to call yourself a restaurant critic, if that kind of thing interests you.