Encino Loses Lalo and Brothers, Abruptly

The last time Encino’s Lalo and Brothers was mentioned in this column, in mid-May, it was to note that restaurant consultant Debbie Slutsky had been working with owner Lalo Durazo to help convert part of its floor space into a lower-priced cafe with a bistro menu. It was supposed to be called Cafe Veranda. The establishment also planned to change the name of the main dining room to Lalo’s Restaurant, Bar & Grill, and update the menu.

Things are indeed different at Lalo’s today: The restaurant has abruptly closed its doors. During the remodeling, Durazo told me recently, he had tried to renegotiate his lease, feeling that the rent he was paying was above market value. When this proved impossible, he said, “we just didn’t see a profitable future for the restaurant anymore, and decided to close while we explore other possibilities in the same neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, noted Durazo, he has been working with partner Jaime Garcia Arteaga on an oceanfront resort and condominium project 27 miles south of the California border in Baja California. Called Club Marena, the complex will, Durazo said, “soon have a food and beverage operation to match the best of L.A.”

GRILL TALK: Doug Delfeld is well-known to local restaurant-goers as a founding partner and manager of Trumps in West Hollywood, and as a founding and managing partner of Opera (now Opera on Ocean) in Santa Monica. But now he’s severed all ties with those two establishments. His new position: general manager of the Grill in Beverly Hills.

According to Grill co-owner Bob Spivak, Delfeld will have complete operational responsibilities for the restaurant. “It’s the same kind of position I held at Trumps for eight years,” Delfeld says. “I’ve always liked the Grill, and Bob and I both seem to function in about the same way, so I feel very comfortable coming here.” No significant changes in the restaurant are planned. “But I’ll be using a critical eye and looking for things I can improve upon,” Delfeld says.

Spivak will remain involved with the Grill, but is devoting most of his energies to opening more units in his popular, casual Daily Grill chain--including one in Newport Beach this December, and another in Studio City next April.

ALL OVER NOTES: Jonathan Waxman, who may be the most famous chef-without-a-restaurant in the country today, has set up the kitchen and created the menu at New York-based developer Harley Baldwin’s new Caribou Club in Aspen and continues to oversee the club’s food service on a consultative basis. The club, which is private, counts Martina Navratilova, John Denver and Michael Douglas among its founding members . . . Sharon and Grant Showley, whose Showley/Wrighton restaurant in Newport Beach closed in May, have moved north to take over Miramonte in the Napa Valley town of St. Helena. Miramonte’s former proprietors, Tom Ash and Udo Nechutnys (now chef at the nearby Auberge de Soleil) closed the restaurant in January . . . After seven years of serving dinner from a prix fixe menu only, Stephan Pyles, chef and co-owner of the acclaimed Routh Street Cafe in Dallas, has gone a la carte--after having found, he says, that the fixed-menu format was “thwarting creativity” . . . Chicago’s famous “rock ‘n’ roll McDonald’s” on the corner of Clark and Ohio streets, the first unit of the chain to stay open 24 hours and the first to develop and merchandise a non-company-generated theme (rock memorabilia), has just become the first McDonald’s to offer pizza home delivery. (McDonald’s has been test-marketing pizza in numerous locations around the U.S.) . . . And the British press reports that rising costs of cod and haddock--fish traditionally used for fish and chips--might prompt some purveyors of this famous English dish to switch to farm-raised salmon (of which there is now a glut on the market) instead. The fish-and-chip boys are skeptical, but apparently willing to try the new (to them) product. Ironically, though, British salmon farmers think it’s a lousy idea. “I do not think the fish-and-chip image is one we would welcome,” said William Crow, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Assn. Most farm-raised salmon now sold in the British Isles, it might be noted, comes from Norway.

VIVE LA CONFUSION: Nation’s Restaurant News reported recently that Le Cochonnet, a French restaurant in Chicago, would highlight the food of three Mediterranean regions of France this summer: Provence, Languedoc, and Ile-de-France. The only trouble is that the Ile-de-France, its name (“Island-of-France”) notwithstanding, is in north-central France, surrounding Paris, at least 300 miles from the Med . . . The Marina Bistro in Marina del Rey has introduced an “a la carte prix fixe “ menu--which certainly seems to cover all the bases. (In fact, the menu is prix fixe and not a la carte: $22 for three courses of mostly traditional French food) . . . And in the department of promiscuous culinary cross-pollination, it is my duty to report that Aesop’s Tables in La Jolla--which is in trouble enough already just for that name--has added “pitza” to its menu. Pitza, of course, is pita bread under Greek-style toppings in the manner of pizza. One variety includes lamb sausage, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, walnuts and red onions; another is made with shrimp and sun-dried tomatoes. All are said to be “nuzzled on top of homemade tomato sauce.”