The Five-Day Pasta Store

Westside restaurateur Bruce Marder must be worried that he’ll wake up one day without enough to do. He’s already the proprietor of three of Los Angeles’ most popular restaurants--West Beach Cafe, Rebecca’s and DC 3--and is at work on a fourth place, the Broadway Deli, which he plans to open in December in Santa Monica (in collaboration with chef Michel Richard and restaurant investor Marvin Zeidler). Now Marder has come up with a concept for yet a fifth place.

“It’ll be a very limited Italian family-style restaurant,” he reveals, “open only for dinner and only from Wednesday through Sunday. The menu will be very small, and the wine list will probably just be red wine and white wine, period.” Marder’s new enterprise will be located at 17th Avenue and Speedway in Venice, in a space which has housed a number of restaurants over the years but is now unoccupied.

Artist Chuck Arnoldi, who conceived the interior for DC 3, will design this restaurant, too, adds Marder. Stan Pratt and David Millen, head chefs at the West Beach Cafe and Rebecca’s, respectively, will function as co-proprietors and consulting chefs at the place, while retaining their primary duties at the other restaurants. Venice real-estate investor Werner Scharff, who is Marder’s partner in Rebecca’s and the Broadway Deli and his landlord at the West Beach, is also a partner here.

Marder adds that he hasn’t decided on a name for his Italian venture, which he hopes to open by the middle of next year--but jokes that maybe he should call it “Speedway, Ltd.”, in honor of its address and its menu limitations. “But the name I really like,” he adds, “is ‘Five-Day Italian Restaurant’.”

BEVERLY HILLS UPDATE: The Beverly Restaurant and Market, which opened to much fanfare in 1987 with Lydia Shire as consulting chef, has closed its doors. Owner Bill Chait, also the proprietor of the Angel City Grill on Melrose and of three Louise’s Trattorias in Santa Monica, West L.A. and the Larchmont area, plans to open a fourth Louise’s on the site. . . . A branch of Hugh Carpenter’s Chinese fast-food mini-chain, Chopstix, is the restaurant that will open in the spring of next year on the Beverly Hills glamour corner--Beverly Drive and Little Santa Monica Blvd.--where the La Scala Boutique now stands. The building, which today houses both the Boutique and its parent La Scala, is scheduled for demolition. Chopstix will go into the new low-rise building that will take its place. As noted previously in this column, La Scala itself will reopen at another Beverly Hills location. . . . And one of New York’s major chain-restaurant franchise holders, Dennis R. Riese, has just purchased a 60% interest in the Ed Debevic’s ‘50s-style diner chain--including two Southern California units in Beverly Hills and Torrance. The 60% in question had belonged to Collins Foods International, Inc., operators of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Sizzler outlets all over the United States and Australia. The remaining Debevic’s equity remains in the hands of Richard Melman’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Inc. of Chicago and Big Four Restaurants, Inc. of Phoenix. . . .

CHEF STORY: “Suddenly the owner’s dream comes true,” reads the press release. “After months of hard work the reservation sheet is fully booked every night. But, then the dream turns into nightmare--i.e., the talented chef is lured away by a rich Los Angeles restaurateur. . . .” The release comes from Cafe Katsu of West Los Angeles, a tiny California/French restaurant owned by Katsu Michite, also proprietor of the top-rated Katsu sushi bar in the Los Feliz district. He is referring, of course, to the fact that his well-reviewed chef at Cafe Katsu, Joseph Miller, was hired away recently by restaurateur Bob Burns to cook at the high-budget Brentwood Bar & Grill. The press release goes on to announce that, happily, a good new chef has been found--Gary Messick, a veteran of the kitchens at L’Orangerie, the Four Seasons Hotel and Bistango. It concludes, “P.S. Rich restaurateurs please stay away!”

TABLE SCRAPS: The tropical-themed Key West is scheduled to open this week in Santa Monica, just off the Third Street Promenade (as they’re now calling the old Santa Monica Mall). The proprietor is Italian-born, Pacific Palisades-raised Nicole Focone, who also runs Buon Gusto on Santa Monica’s Main Street. . . . Danny’s Diner, featuring what is billed as “fresh-from-scratch food of the ‘50s” is new on Sunset at La Brea in Hollywood. . . . Claude Levayer is the new chef at Le Triumph in Mission Hills. That establishment’s former chef, Robert Loison, has departed to open his own place in Peyson, Arizona. . . .

WORTH NOTING: Spago hosts a cooking-and-wine class this Tuesday, May 9 at 11:30 a.m. in conjunction with UCLA Extension. The restaurant’s new chef, Serge Falesitch (he replaces Anne Gingrass, not Wolfgang Puck), will demonstrate a four-course meal--which will then be served to participants. Spago maitre d’ and wine buyer Bernard Erpicum will conduct a tasting of wines from Burgundy and from California’s Kalin Cellers. Kalin winemaker Terry Leighton will also speak. The event is priced at $95 per person. Call Cecilia de Castro at (818) 993-0752 for details. . . . UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, in conjunction with the university’s Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, hosts a seminar on wine and food in the 18th Century, on May 20 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Participants will include Sacramento wine authority Darrell Corti, restaurateurs Michael Wild and Carol Brendlinger of the Bay Wolf in Oakland, and UC Santa Barbara professor of French Ronald W. Tobin (who will speak on gastronomy and malnutrition in Moliere’s “The Miser”). An appropriately 18th-Century-style lunch will be served. The extremely limited tickets are $75 per person, $125 per couple. Call (213) 731-8529.