A Three-Star Visit to West Los Angeles

It’s been a while since Los Angeles has enjoyed the ministrations of a three-star guest chef from France--and I’m not at all sure that a cuisinier who bears Michelin’s ultimate accolade has ever before set up shop for a full week in a Southern California restaurant. But now we have the celebrated Roger Verge of Le Moulin de Mougins in Mougins, on the French Riviera, coming to Champagne in West Los Angeles. Verge’s executive chef, Serge Chollet, and Chollet’s sous-chef also will be on the visit, from Feb. 2 through 9.

Why Verge? Why Champagne? Sentimental reasons, partly. Champagne’s owners, Patrick and Sophie Healy, met in the South of France. While they were courting, Patrick apprenticed at Verge’s restaurant while Sophie worked at Le Feu Follet (then owned by noted restaurateur Andre Surmain), in the same village. Even earlier, though, Healy remembers that on his first trip to France, at the age of 18, he was taken to dinner at Le Moulin by no less than Julia Child--a friend of his grandmother, cookbook author Harriet Healy. Meeting the courtly, cosmopolitan Verge after the meal was what made him decide to become a chef.

“Whenever Sophie and I go back to France,” Healy says, “we try to have a meal with Verge at Le Moulin. It was over one of these meals that the idea of inviting him here came up. He immediately accepted, and as soon as we could work out the details, we set a date. He closes in February anyway each year, so he can bring his top people with him.”

Verge, Chollet and of course Healy will offer a nightly a la carte menu during the Mougins contingent’s stay, including such dishes as zucchini blossoms with black truffles and mushrooms, scallops with artichokes and orange sauce, smoked salmon grenadins with a sage-flavored tomato and sweet pepper compote, Verge’s famous leg of lamb cooked seven hours in Cote-Rotie with pureed potatoes, and raspberry gratin with lavender ice cream. Complete three-course dinners are $80 per person, and early reservations are essential.

GOING?: Last month this column reported that the Venice jazz club-cum-restaurant, St. Mark’s, was going through changes--essentially, recommitting itself to the restaurant portion of the operation. The live jazz would remain but not conflict with the dinner atmosphere, we reported. Now comes word that St. Mark’s has closed temporarily to revamp the menu and consider other possible changes in format.

A TALE OF TWO RESTAURANTS: A recent misty night in Marina del Rey. A couple wants to grab a bite to eat. Something casual and inexpensive. Marie Callendar’s sounds about right. They enter the restaurant. There is no one at the host’s station. A man and a woman are behind the pie counter a few feet away, helping another customer, but they pay no attention to the new arrivals. There are numerous empty tables in one dining room and at least a few more can be glimpsed in a second room.

The couple wanders around for three or four minutes, then, catching the eye of the man behind the counter, one of them asks, “Should we just seat ourselves?” He emerges. “Oh, no,” he says, “I’ll help you. Could I have your name please?” “Our name?” asks the couple. “Is there a wait?” “Yeah,” answers the man. “It’ll be about 10 or 15 minutes.” “But what about all the empty tables?” the couple asks. “There’s only one waitress on that section,” the man replies, “so we can’t seat you yet.”

The couple exits in disbelief. They drive a block and spy the new La Salsa, upstairs at the Marina Marketplace complex. They park and go inside. There is no one at the host’s station. But a chef in the open kitchen greets them warmly and calls a host over to greet them. There are numerous empty tables. The couple is shown to one immediately and given prompt, professional service. Question of the day: Which restaurant will the couple go back to? And which one will they avoid in the future--and denounce to their friends (and, in the event that they have any, their readers) as badly managed and not worth the trouble?

GLOBAL TABLE TALK: Word from the Cote d’Azur is that chef Louis Outhier plans to reopen his shuttered L’Oasis in La Napoule, which was graced with three stars from the Guide Michelin until its closing three years ago--this time with a group of Japanese investors behind him. . . . Another high-ticket New York restaurant has turned off its ovens--the 40-year-old Laurent, once one of the best French restaurants in Manhattan. Owner Laurent Losa reports that he will try to reopen after reorganizing his business. . . . And starting in mid-February, Larry Forgione’s New York restaurant, An American Place, turns into a blues club after 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday nights. Forgione plans a late-night menu, a $5 cover charge and a drink minimum only at the tables. . . . And Chez Melange in Redondo Beach hosts its sixth annual “For Our Children” benefit food and wine tasting and wine auction next Sunday, beginning at 3 p.m., in the parking lot behind the restaurant. This is a big event with more than 50 wineries and a like number of Southland restaurants (including such big-deal establishments as L’Ermitage, Remi and Noa Noa) participating. Tickets are available in advance only, at $75 apiece. Information: (213) 540-1222.

DEATH IN PARIS: Jose Lampreia, the talented Portuguese-born chef/restaurateur whose Maison Blanche was one of the most innovative (and celebrity-filled) Parisian restaurants of the 1980s, and who had just opened 15 Montaigne atop the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, has succumbed to complications of AIDS. The new restaurant remains open at this time under the direction of Lampreia’s longtime associate, Rene Durand.

BEYOND GOAT CHEESE: Leah Adler (who is director Steven Spielberg’s mother) and her husband, Bernie, have added pizzas with--their term--”chewish” crust to the menu at their Milky Way dairy restaurant in Los Angeles. Among the varieties offered are a “pizza de lox” and something called “mo hotta mo betta,” which involves barbecue sauce and assorted smoked fish. Milky Way pizzas will be served on a heated stone disc to keep them hot.

PLUS CA CHANGE: “All restaurants are suffering from a drop in business, mainly because of the fading away of expense-account patronage, and the usual trend to quick economies which a period such as the present one evokes. Some are trying to bridge the profit gap with economies of their own: cutting down the crew, adopting substitution in basic materials, reducing the scope of menus. . . . Most are struggling hard, however, to maintain quality without cutting into it by resorting to the measures described. Restaurants feel the economic squeeze before most enterprises.”

Sound familiar? I found it in a letter I got, dated June 1, 1971, from Silas Spitzer--co-founder of the once-prestigious Holiday Magazine Dining Awards.

RESTAURANT MISCELLANY: Matthew Siegel, former chef sommelier at New York’s 21 Club, is new restaurant manager at Lunaria in West Los Angeles and has organized the restaurant’s first wine dinner. Featuring winemaker Mike Grgich and his wares, plus a four-course dinner, the event will be Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. Price is $75 a head. . . . And Don Dickman, one-time chef de cuisine at Trumps and executive chef at the Bistro Garden, has been named to head the kitchen at the Carnegie Deli in Beverly Hills.

(FISH) FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Patrons of the El Pollo Loco on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice recently were given paper napkins reading “Catfish King--David Beard’s Farm Raised Catfish.” Are we to expect El Pescado Loco soon?