From the Big Apple to Santa Monica

One of New York City’s best and most original Italian restaurants is closing up shop in Manhattan and moving to Santa Monica. Well, sort of. . . .

The restaurant in question is Remi, a handsome, 65-seat, Venetian-style trattoria that opened in 1987 on East 79th Street, by chef Francesco Antonucci (a protege of our own Piero Selvaggio, proprietor of Valentino and Primi) and noted restaurant designer Adam Tihany (whose interiors include the new Bice Pomodoro on La Cienega).

Tihany has long planned to expand the Remi concept, setting up branches of the restaurant in other cities. He and Antonucci have only recently decided to shutter the original in the process, though. “We’ve established our reputation here,” he says. “We’ve made ‘the mark of Remi.’ Now it’s time to move on.”

Accordingly, the 79th Street location will close in December of this year. By Jan. 1, he continues, the restaurant will be reborn at Third Street and Broadway in Santa Monica. “It’ll be bigger than the original Remi,” he says, “with about 110 seats, but it will have the same feeling. We’re passing the torch to L.A.” Antonucci will open the restaurant here and supervise the kitchen for several months.

Then, in April, a new Remi will arise back in Manhattan, this time on the West Side, at 53rd Street and 7th Avenue. “It won’t be like the old Remi,” Tihany says. “It will have an open galleria format, with about 120 seats. It will be less expensive than the present Remi, and concentrate more on pastas. With all the theaters and hotels nearby, we’ll probably have quite a different clientele than we do now.”

He hopes to open yet another Remi in Chicago, later next year, Tihany adds. Meanwhile, Angelenos will get another look at his design abilities when Bice itself opens in L.A. in November.

HAGGIS AND HEALTH: This column recently noted that the Scotch Whisky Assn. is sponsoring a contest dedicated to finding “The Great American Haggis.” Now that notorious Scottish delicacy, made from oats and lamb innards boiled together in a sheep’s stomach, is in the news again: According to the newsletter of the American Institute of Wine & Food, a recent British study has found that haggis, though high in fat and salt, apparently has no ill effects on the Scottish population--but does raise fat levels in the blood of the English. Scientists who conducted the study, who believe that Scots have developed a resistance to haggis over the years, call the dish, “ill-conceived and badly designed, but brilliantly executed.”

OPEN ARGUMENT: In response to my article in this section on “open kitchen” designers Paul Bisno and Larry Wirth (March 26), Sidney (Ted) Koskoff, one-time proprietor of the late Ted’s Grill in Santa Monica (which closed in 1972), writes to say, “As far back as 1927, Ted’s Grill was featuring open kitchens. When we moved from Channel Road, after the Santa Monica Canyon Road flood in 1939, to 140 Entrada Road, we still had an open kitchen. And when I built at 146 Entrada Drive, we also featured (one).” What those open kitchens were used for is indicated in part by the old letterhead on which Koskoff’s letter appears: Between its opening in 1927 and the time the letterhead was printed in the early 1970s, Ted’s Grill claimed to have served some 3.5 million steaks.

NICE RICE: Having inveighed in these pages recently about the inauthenticity of most paella in America, and specifically about the fact that the wrong variety of rice is almost invariably used for the dish, I must now report that I recently found, at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba! in Chicago, a paella made with the right rice and in the right manner. It seems that paella specialist Juan Tamarit, from the Lluna de Valencia restaurant near Valencia, came through town, was shocked to see what the restaurant was passing off as paella, and taught them how to do it right. As chef Jennifer Smith now makes it, genuine Alcazaba-brand Valencian rice is used, there are no peas or pimientos or other superfluous additions, and the paella even has a nice brown crust or soccarrat. It may well be the most authentic paella in America.

NEW TABLES IN TOWN: La Scala Malibu has reopened in its new location, across Cross Creek Road from the original site. . . . L’Entrecote, a French-style steakhouse, has opened in Beverly Hills. Salad, steak and French fries go for $14.50 per person. . . . A new Chin Chin, the fourth, is about to open at the Marina Marketplace complex in Marina del Rey. . . Otani, A Garden Restaurant, has been launched in Palm Springs New Otani, America. . . . And Marina’s Village, serving Veracruz-style Mexican food, has debuted in the City of Industry.

RESTAURANT DATEBOOK: The Mandarin in Beverly Hills has introduced a nightly supper menu from 9:30 p.m. . . . the Crocodile Cafe in Brea has instituted a “Build Your Own Pizza” program Sundays through Thursdays, allowing diners to choose from among 25-plus pizza-topping ingredients, from tomato sauce and green peppers to smoked chicken and black beans, for $7.95 per pizza. . . . The Century Wine Club at Hy’s in Century City features the wines of Acacia, Chalone, Edna Valley and Carmenet with a six-course dinner at 7 p.m. Thursday. The dinner, which is open to the public, costs $65 per person. . . . And Shane Hidden on the Glen in Beverly Glen (not to be confused, please, with Shain’s restaurant in Sherman Oaks) boasts a new enclosed patio and has started serving lunch from 11:30 a.m., Monday through Friday