St. Mark’s: ‘Restaurant First and a Jazz Club After’

The patron saint of Venice, Italy, is San Marco --Saint Mark. Who knows who’s the patron saint of L.A.’s Venice, but an extravagant restaurant and jazz club, scheduled to open here in mid-September, has borrowed the good saint’s name.

St. Mark’s is the work of Francois Petit (former manager of Venice’s West Beach Cafe and Rebecca’s) and two partners, Mike Quinn and Warner Scharf. Architect Osvaldo Maiozzi (designer of Pazzia on La Cienega) has been hired to create a dramatic 200-seat interior done up with black granite, stainless steel and cobalt-blue suede booths. Roughly $300,000 has been spent on sound, video and lighting systems. And to cook? French chef Gil Saulnier (Le St. Germain’s last chef before it closed) assisted by former Spago chef Lisa Stalvy.

“The food is very important,” Petit stresses. “This is a restaurant first and a jazz club after.” The style of cooking, he says, will be part northern Italian, part southern French and part California nouvelle. “ Pas de heavy sauce, pas de stuff like that,” he says. “It will be tres light.” Dinner will be served seven nights a week from 6 to 10 p.m. and supper nightly from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., with brunch on weekends but no weekday lunch. Petit estimates dinner prices at $6-12 for appetizers, $16-$22 for main courses, $5-$8 for desserts.

Among the acts already booked for St. Mark’s are Spencer Davis, Billy Preston, Freddie Hubbard, Tito Puente, Joe Pass, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Jon Hendrix, Larry Coryell, and Kenny Rankin--and, says Petit: “I am trying, trying, trying to get Ray Charles.” Maybe he should pray to you-know-who.

THE MEDITERRANEAN IS THE MESSAGE: Alberto Liano wants to make sure people understand him correctly. His corporation, which also owns Il Giardino in Beverly Hills and Pane Caldo in West Hollywood, has just purchased 1000 Wilshire in Santa Monica, and renamed it 1000 Wilshire Ristorante. But the menu will not be exclusively Italian, he says. It will be based instead on the so-called Mediterranean Diet, lately acclaimed by nutritional experts for its various health-saving characteristics. But, he adds--and this is what he wants to make sure that people understand--”This is not a diet with diet food.” It’s a diet in the sense of a style of eating, common to peoples all over the Mediterranean region--a style that concentrates on seafood, pasta, grains, fresh vegetables, olive oil, and wine, and goes easy on saturated fats and other dietary nasties. Sort of like, oh, Italian food, I guess.

FRONTIERS IN FOOD SERVICE: Rod Gardiner, president of the Gardiner Group, which owns Hy’s in Century City, the Kobe Japanese Steak House in Palm Springs, and a branch of each of the two in Hawaii, has opened a new place in Honolulu. Called Banditos Cantina Hawaii, it is said to feature “Hawaiian NuMex” cuisine. For instance? For instance, a tofu burrito and chicken satay with coconut-mint-chipotle chile peanut sauce. Banditos also offers “tequila-shot gals armed with shot-glass belts and tequila-holding holsters.”

A SPOT MORE PIZZA?: Imagine Spago with plenty of room, no waits for tables, and pizzas in the $4 to $6 range--oh, and no celebrities. Sound impossible? Well, it isn’t. It’s just English. According to the latest issue of the Santa-Barbara-based Entree newsletter, there is a small but popular trattoria called Spago in London. The owner, Roman-born Angelo Felici, told Entree that he has never heard of Spago in Los Angeles and that he calls his place that “because we do spaghetti-- spago is short for spaghetti.” (Well, actually, spago means string or cord and the word spaghetti , which means little strings or cords, is derived from it--but never mind.)

Wolfgang Puck, proprietor of L.A.’s own Spago, notes that he doesn’t think there’s much that he can do about the London restaurant--and that, anyway, it sounds like a small place, probably not worth worrying about. “It’s funny, though,” he adds. “Somebody from London, not this same man, tried so hard to get me to open a Spago there a little while ago, and he bothered and bothered me about it. I said I didn’t think the timing was right and that, anyway, I had too many restaurants in California already. Then he came over here to see me and to go to Spago for the first time, and he didn’t like it. He walked out. He said it was too noisy, and he had to go someplace more quiet for dinner.”

STARS A LA CARTE: Pee-wee Herman and Adam Ant like Cafe Mambo. Shirley MacLaine gets soul food (for her well-traveled soul) at Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch. Tony Danza, Rob Lowe and Sean Penn hang out at Twenty/20. (Wow! Party time!) The casts of “General Hospital” and “Days of Our Lives” may frequently be seen at Ocean Avenue Seafood. . . . That’s the kind of information, anyway, that we get from a new little pamphlet-sized restaurant guide called “Celebrity Hideaways.” The guide lists about 50 restaurants and clubs around L.A.--but instead of cataloguing dishes served, it tells us who (supposedly) eats where. It is a guide not for the hungry so much as for the star-crazed. New Yorkers, who generally believe that L.A. restaurant patrons care about seeing and being seen more than about what’s on their plate, will probably love it. And they can get a copy, too, by sending $2 to Celebrity Hideaways, P.O. Box 241823, Los Angeles 90024.

ROLL-PLAYING: One of the more popular items served at sushi bars in the L.A. area is the so-called California Roll made with crabmeat and avocado--two products for which California is well-known. So what do you suppose you might find if you sat down at a Japanese restaurant called Sakura, in Huntsville, Ala.? Why, Alabama Roll, of course. Made with catfish and pork cracklings? Peanuts? Corn? Nope. Made with those good old Alabama specialties: smoked salmon, caviar, and, er, avocado.

ON TODAY’S MENU: Old West chow is on the fire at two Silverlake-Los Feliz area restaurants today. Broiled rattlesnake, cold cactus and pan-fried brook trout are just some of the “hip cowboy food” fixin’s on L.A. Nicola’s five-course dinner, which will be served with a tasting of seven beers ($40 per person). At Duplex, it’s a Cinderblock Buster with barbecued beef and pork ribs, hot links and chicken, complete with cole slaw made from a recipe handed down to chef Mark Carter by his own Granny Cohen. . . . And Gilliland’s in Santa Monica presents a “Pacific Flavors” dinner today from 6 p.m., pairing wines from the top Alsatian producer Hugel & Fils with recipes from Asian food expert Hugh Carpenter. Sample combination: Thai fried dumplings with coconut milk and basil plus 1986 Gewurztraminer.

RESTAURANT MISCELLANY: Coffee expert Tim Castle will offer a one-day course at UCLA Extension, Sept. 16, called “Understanding, Tasting, and Appreciating Coffee”--a course I would highly recommend, incidentally, to a great number of restaurateurs hereabouts. Call (213) 206-8120 for details. . . . Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Cafe Fanny in Berkeley, who might genuinely be called the mother of contemporary American cooking (with Julia Child, I suppose, being the grandmother), teaches and prepares special meals Oct. 7-8 for the Great Chefs at the Robert Mondavi Winery program. Cost is $595 per person, not including lodging or transportation. For further informationcall (707) 944-2866.