A Bit of Chinese Cuisine to a Latin Beat

While Mario Tamayo (co-founder of Cha Cha Cha and proprietor of Cafe Mambo) is readying the Atlas Bar & Grill in the Wilshire District’s Wiltern building, his estranged partner, Toribio Prado, has a project in the works, too: a Chinese/Latino hybrid sort of place in Hollywood, to be called Chino Latino.

Prado currently runs Cha Cha Cha and serves as consulting chef at the popular new El Mocambo, an upscale Cuban-style establishment in West Hollywood. El Mocambo boss Perry Santos is his partner in the new enterprise, which is scheduled to open in late November on the site of the landmark Chinese Kitchen, across the street from El Coyote on Beverly Boulevard. Santos and his wife Marta are designing the interior of Chino Latino, which they promise “will resemble a Chinese restaurant in the middle of the Amazon.” The menu will mix Cuban and Central and South American food ideas with dishes from several regions of China--for instance, “ mu shu burrito” stuffed with fried plantains and black beans, and Chinese-style barbecued pork ribs with mango and tomatillo salsa.

“We’re really having fun with the whole idea,” says Santos. “We’ve been playing with a wok stove on our off hours at El Mocambo. We’ve been in New York, checking out the Chinese-Cuban scene there, meeting chefs, and so on. Now Toribio is taking a couple of Chinese cooking classes, and he’s actually going to go cook at a Chinese restaurant downtown for a while. We’ve got all kinds of ideas. The guest checks are going to be written on Chinese laundry tickets. We’re having special Spanish-language fortune cookies made up. And we’re going to have the most interesting eggrolls and sparerib sauces you’ve ever tasted”

Santos adds two other bits of news: He and Prado are also developing a take-out barbecue concept, in association with entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. And, he says, “We’re negotiating right now to open El Mocambo in the Trump Plaza in New York . . . right where Trader Vic’s used to be.”

RUMOR CONTROL: A reader spotted a notice of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing for the Gustaf Anders partnership and related businesses that ran the first-rate California/contemporary restaurant in La Jolla until earlier this year. However, owners, William (Gustaf) Magnuson and Ulf (Anders) Standberg recently moved the restaurant to the South Coast Plaza Village shopping center in Santa Ana where it is very much open and going strong. When contacted, Standberg said the bankruptcy was merely a way of clearing up a complicated situation left behind in La Jolla.

BIGGER THAN THE BEATLES?: It’s no secret that Michael McCarty, proprietor of Michael’s in Santa Monica (and Adirondacks in Denver and Washington), has, shall we say, a well-developed sense of self-esteem. Just how well-developed, wasn’t apparent until invitations for this year’s “Eat for Art” event came out recently. It features a photograph of McCarty cast as, well, Jesus Christ. The photo is a take-off on Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” in which 11 Westside chefs--among them Gerri Gilliland (Gilliland’s), Evan Kleiman (the Angelis), Stan Pratt (West Beach Cafe), Steve Neveaux (Opera) and Norbert Knoll (Knoll’s Black Forest Inn)--strike adoring, apostolic poses. (Apparently, no one wanted to play Judas.) In the center, wearing a suit and a smirk, and making a gesture not unlike that made by the central figure in Da Vinci’s original, is McCarty. Come to think of it, though, McCarty might not see himself as Christ, but as French super-chef Paul Bocuse, who once posed with his fellow chefs in a similar photographic recreation. Frankly, I’m not sure which is worse.

(Eat for Art, incidentally, is a benefit for the Santa Monica Pier on Oct. 2. A dozen local restaurants provide food--tickets are $100 per person. Proceeds go to the foundation’s numerous civic arts programs. Call (213) 458-8350 for further information.)

RESTAURANT MISCELLANY: Bruno’s Ristorante, the big, antique- and artifact-filled Italian restaurant in Mar Vista, perhaps best known for its good and remarkably priced wine list, has closed--”temporarily”, say its proprietors. . . . The Pine Avenue Grill in Long Beach, owned and operated by the University Restaurant Group (which also runs Ocean Avenue Seafood in Santa Monica), has transformed itself into the Pine Avenue Fish House. In honor of the change, the restaurant is offering each guest who samples the new dinner menu a coupon worth $6 towards breakfast at the place. . . . Loretta’s Original Chinese Food on Burton Way in Beverly Hills has opened a second B.H. location nearby on La Cienega.

EVENTS: A four-course wild boar dinner will be served at the Showley-Wrightson Restaurant in Newport Beach on Oct. 1. The wines of Guenoc will be featured, and the price is $65 per person, including tax and tip.