Claude Segal Will Oversee Ma-Be’s Eclectic Menu

The highly talented Claude Segal, who succeeded Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison and has since been head chef at Bistango and the Four Oaks Restaurant (and, in between other gigs, has worked as a hands-on consultant for Wave and created food for the one-night-a-week Club Sandwich), has a new post--in charge of the kitchen at Ma-Be (pronounced MAH-bay), which will open any day now on the site of the old Kathy Gallagher’s on West 3rd Street in West Hollywood.

Ma-Be is the creation of John Makhani, who also owns Prezzo and Rive Gauche in Sherman Oaks and Lautrec in Woodland Hills.

“Ma-Be” is Makhani’s rendering of mabe , which Websters defines as “a cultured pearl essentially hemispherical in form.” He chose the name, Makhani says, because it was easy to remember and because he didn’t want the restaurant’s moniker to have any specifically French or Italian connotations.

The food, he says, will be “northern Italian, southern French, some Spanish, maybe some Greek and a little of the North African countries.” Specifically, the menu will include “oysters, lots of seafood appetizers, carpaccio of both salmon and beef, salads, fresh pasta, fish, mesquite-grilled meats and all the Italian and French favorites.”

Cooking with Segal in the kitchen will be Sandro Marcato, a veteran of the defunct DDL Foodshow in Beverly Hills and, for the last three years, chef at Makhani’s Prezzo.

The interior of Ma-Be, Makhani says, will be “very comfortable and so-called earthy, and yet very artistic. I don’t want to call it rustic, but it’s very charming .”

CHEFS IN THE NEWS: Claude Segal’s replacement at the Four Oaks Restaurant is Peter Roelants, who was one of the chefs at L’Orangerie for years before leaving to open his own place (which was never realized) and do various kinds of consulting work. . . . Another well-known local chef (everybody in the food business knows who it is, but he refuses to confirm it for print) is about to take over Le St. Germain--which finally, officially, is closing, after all those rumors to that effect. (Proprietor Paul Bruggemans will concentrate on his Palm Springs establishment, Le Vallauris.) . . . Patrick Healy, owner/chef of Champagne in West Los Angeles (and, incidentally, former chef at Le St. Germain, as well as at Colette in Beverly Hills), welcomes students of the Let’s Get Cookin’ cookware store/cooking school into his kitchen Aug. 13. He will demonstrate a complete menu and later serve it to participants. Information: (818) 991-3940. . . . Famed New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme has sold the rights to his book “Authentic Cajun Cooking” to TV Lighthouse for the Blind, which will publish it in Braille and in large print. Information: (504) 899-4501. . . . And in case you thought one chef named Puck was enough, you’d better get ready for Klaus Puck. He is Wolfgang’s kid brother and is working at Remi in New York--making salads. . . .

SERVING ME RIGHT: In my most recent column, I recounted a nightmare of service at a new Westside restaurant and promised to reveal how I would have reacted if I had not been observing it professionally. Here’s how:

Identify the source of the problem, first. Sometimes “bad service” isn’t bad service at all; long waits between courses and jumbled orders are usually the kitchen’s fault--though, of course, a good waiter apologizes for delays and notices mix-ups.

Beyond that, if you get no attention whatsoever at your table, not even menus or table settings, it might just be honest confusion--everybody thinks somebody else is taking care of you (though, again, any decent waiter in the place will quickly notice what’s going on and take steps to remedy the situation). If this seems to be the problem, alert the manager or maitre d’hotel .

In extreme cases, you might even consider doing what I did one evening a few years back: Get up from the table with your entire party and very nicely say to the front man, “We’re going to have a drink in the bar until somebody’s ready to serve us. Would you please let us know when that is?” (I got moved to a new table and was very well taken care of after that.)

If the service problem seems to be due to one incompetent or distracted waiter, and if the problem becomes annoying enough, I would feel no qualms about simply asking for another table, or to have another server assigned to me.

If the problem seems to stem from the top, from the manager or the maitre d’hotel himself--as the debacle I encountered last week did--there’s not too much that can be done. In those cases, I advise eating up and getting out of the place as fast as possible, having spent as little money as can be managed--or else just sitting back, relaxing and pretending you are in Moscow or some such place and are lucky to get any attention at all. . . .

NEW DEALS: The Rose City Diner in Pasadena guarantees it can serve breakfast in 10 minutes or less, or you and your party will be offered a free return breakfast. . . . And Sleuth’s Bar & Grill in the Sherman Oaks Galleria now offers diners a reduced-price $3 movie ticket to any one of the Pacific Theaters in the Galleria and a two-for-one ticket for the Improv Comedy Club at the nearby Valley Hilton. . . .