Spago’s Former Chef Turns Teacher

Serge Falesitch, who has worked for various Wolfgang Puck enterprises for the past nine years and has been head chef at Spago for the past year and a half, has amicably severed his connection with the restaurant and with Puck. “I was at Spago from the beginning,” he says. “I worked on the opening. Then I helped at Chinois on Main, at Spago Tokyo, and with Wolf’s frozen pizzas. Finally, I just thought I wanted to have a change from production-line cooking and try something more cozy. You just get so burned out doing the same thing night after night.”

The new chef at Spago is Makoto Tanaka--another longtime veteran of both that restaurant and Chinois on Main (with a stint at New York’s Chinois-inspired China Grill in between).

Falesitch, meanwhile, says he will probably get back into the restaurant business before the end of the year. But for now he’s joined forces with City Restaurant pastry chef Courtney Callahan (who remains at her post at that establishment) to offer private in-home cooking classes for groups of 10. “We send out a list of about 20 items,” he explains, “and you can choose four of them. For $65 per person, we come in and demonstrate the cooking with everybody helping, and then sit down and have a nice dinner party. It takes the myth out of fine cooking, because people don’t usually realize what goes into their food.”

FURTHER TALES OF THE UNKNOWN: Santa Barbara-based travel writer and publisher William Tomicki writes to confirm that indeed he is not Santa Barbara’s “Unknown Critic”--author of the controversial new “Santa Barbara Restaurant Guide” mentioned recently in this space. Neither, he adds, is it such other Santa Barbara food personalities as Caroline Bates, Neal Flaster, Barney Brantingham, Barney Conrad, Hilary Dole Klein or Julia Child. (I have also been able to confirm that it is not, as has been otherwise suggested, D. Crosby Ross, one-time American Institute of Wine & Food executive director and former Santa Barbara gourmet-food retailer.) Tomicki, who publishes the restaurant newsletter, Entree, offers some additional information about the Mystery Mouth: “He is a man, although the photo on the back (cover of the book) is, strangely, (of) a woman. (He) has appeared as a subject, not author, in most of the magazines mentioned (in his resume). He is pretty much a household name in Santa Barbara, especially Montecito.”

Any other nominations?

VENI VIDI CIAO: Earlier this year, I reported that Joe Venezia, former chef at our own Hotel Bel-Air, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and Mason’s, had moved to Atlanta to take over the kitchen at the new Veni Vidi Vici--an establishment notable for the fact that famed Italian cooking teacher and author Marcella Hazan and her wine-guru husband Victor were both investors and hands-on consultants. The restaurant opened on schedule in March, and was a great success--reportedly grossing as much as $100,000 a week--but Venezia left the place abruptly last month and has returned to Los Angeles.

“I was very disappointed in the experience,” he says. “I worked on the restaurant for about a year before it opened. I spent some time in Italy with Marcella and did cooking classes with her here in California, and then we worked together for two months in Atlanta. The whole time, she was so concerned about the food being authentic, about it not misrepresenting her and everything she had been teaching all those years. But then, even though the place was a success, the investors decided that they had to cut costs. Now they’ve turned it into what I would call an Olive Garden sort of place--and Marcella seems to be supporting their decision. They’ve pretty much pulled back from the authentic Italian food, and everybody who was originally in the kitchen has left--including me.” He adds, “The sad thing is that I’m not even sure a lot of the customers will notice the difference.”

Venezia is now considering opening a restaurant of his own in Los Angeles. “A place like Vici could be really successful here,” he says. “I don’t think anybody here is doing Italian food with that degree of authenticity.”

RANCHO SANTA FE CIAO: According to a recent press release, Claude Segal--last seen as executive chef of Tapenade, at the Rancho Valencia resort in Rancho Santa Fe--is back in his former berth at Ma Be in Los Angeles. “John Makhani, owner of Ma Be,” reads the release, “is very pleased to announce Claude Segal’s return . . . as executive chef. Claude took a four-month break in order to open a restaurant in San Diego.”

Has the peripatetic Segal--who has been chef and/or chef-consultant at Ma Maison, Bistango, Wave, and the Four Oaks, in addition to Ma Be, since his arrival in L.A. about 10 years ago--really deserted Rancho Valencia? He laughs. “Not at all,” he says. “When I left Ma Be, the understanding was that I would continue to consult on the menu. But in opening Tapenade, I had very little time to do that. Now that Tapenade is running smoothly, I’m able to give some attention to Ma Be. But I’m not back in L.A. I’m still very much here in Rancho Santa Fe.”

Speaking of Rancho Santa Fe, another noted chef who had recently set up shop in that community--the even more peripatetic Guy Leroy--has left his new venue, Delicias, after less than a month. Just to tie things together neatly, it might be noted that two chefs mentioned earlier in this column--Serge Falesitch and Joe Venezia--have both been asked to help out temporarily at the place, and are considering so doing.

RESTAURANT MISCELLANY: One more neat tie-up: Henri Labadie, who has worked as maitre d’hotel or manager at numerous Southland restaurants, including Ma Maison, Spago, Bistango, and Four Oaks, is now the manager at Nucleus Nuance on Melrose Avenue. . . . Five local restaurants--Tribeca in Beverly Hills, Bellagio Place in Bel-Air, Rosso e Nero and Chapo (where chef Guy Leroy was briefly . . . oh, never mind) on Melrose, and Jay’s A Great New York Deli in Long Beach--are showing the works of several local artists through Sept. 16 as part of L.A.’s Open Festival. . . . And the Westin Bonaventure, downtown, hosts another sort of festival, called Fantasia d’Italia, from Friday through Sept. 30. Special Italian dishes will be offered in the hotel’s Beaudry’s, Top of Five and Sidewalk Cafe restaurants, as will a selection of Italian wines and spirits.