How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Ranch?

One of Santa Barbara’s best young chefs, Marc Ehrler, has left the San Ysidro Ranch. According to Bill Shoaf, general manager of the ranch, Ehrler’s Provencal French food will also be replaced at the Stonehouse Restaurant . . . with American Regional cuisine.

“Marc is a tremendous chef,” says Shoaf. “But considering that Santa Barbara has so much to offer in the way of great wineries and seafood and wonderful areas for producing vegetables, it’s amazing that no one is doing anything with that product.”

Gerard Thompson has been hired to replace Ehrler. “He is from Texas,” says Shoaf, “and so he grew up with different flavors and thoughts.” Thompson, who was trained by John Makin at Houston’s Remington Hotel (Makin is currently chef at the Four Seasons at Beverly Hills), will take over Ehrler’s duties next Thursday and plans to have the full menu in effect by the end of November. “We will get more involved with the cottage food producers and the smaller wineries and allow Stonehouse to sort of assume a position of trying to give these people a place where they can show off their wares,” says Shoaf.

Ehrler has not been idle since leaving the restaurant. “I have two projects in the works,” he says, “one in Los Angeles and another in Montecito. I was going to leave Stonehouse in January but we made it short. Now I can have those three months to work on my things and I’m still getting paid by the ranch.”

Meanwhile, down south, Rancho Valencia Resort (which is managed by the owners of the San Ysidro Ranch, Auberge Associates), has appointed Salvatore Petrolino as executive chef. Petrolino (formerly of An American Place in New York and Campton Place Hotel and Postrio in San Francisco) will cook Bradley Ogden’s food. “Salvatore’s solid training made him the ideal candidate to implement the new menus and cuisine designed by consulting chef Bradley Ogden,” says Claude Rouas of Auberge Associates. “He will establish Rancho Valencia’s restaurant as a regional dining establishment known for its fresh, local cuisine.”

DAVID’S PIZZAS: “We’re thinking of calling it the I Hope the Oven Doesn’t Fall on Anybody’s Head Pizza Restaurant,” says David Liederman, of the New York David’s Cookies chain. The oven is a gigantic, 20x30-foot, wood-fired pizza contraption made of bricks, which he plans to hang directly above Budd Friedman’s Improv comedy club in Santa Monica.

“The good news is that the structural steel is already in place, because it’s going to be a six-story building,” says Liederman, “So now we (he and New York restaurant designer Sam Lopata) just have to figure a way to get our oven fitted into their structural steel.”

The New York cookie maker will form a partnership with Friedman; Liederman will run the pizza restaurant and Friedman will run the Improv, located in the basement below the restaurant.

Liederman says his place will be unlike any other pizza restaurant on the West Coast. “This is a gigantic oven that heats up to about 750 to 800 degrees. It literally cooks the pizza in three to four minutes.” The process, he says, is similar to one that’s been used in Rome and Naples for hundreds of years. Liederman’s pizzas--sausage, pepperoni, white clams, “nothing crazy like mu shu chicken”--will be served on cookie sheets right from the oven. “Very informal, clearly no tablecloths,” says Liederman. “It will be a pizza joint .”

MOSS GATHERS: Remember Luma, the New York-based restaurant serving healthy food to beautiful people that was all set to open at 385 N. La Cienega? “The 385 deal fell apart,” says Richard Drapkin of the Santa Monica-based Siegel Co. But all is not lost. Drapkin says his company has sold Antonio’s restaurant on Montana to Jerry Moss at A&M; Records. And, he says, Moss is the financial backer of Luma.

BARGAINS: La Toque in West Hollywood is now offering the mushroom menu and extravaganza through Nov. 16. “I’ve got Judas ears, coulemelles, and I’ve even got a mushroom from France that bleeds orange blood when you cut it-- lactarius deliciosus ,” says chef-owner Ken Frank, who plans to serve as many as 12 to 15 different kinds of mushrooms in his $40 prix-fixe mushroom menu. “For $15 extra you can upgrade to white truffles. It’s like upgrading to first class,” says Frank. . . . Tulipe, the Melrose Avenue French restaurant, has dropped its prices and instigated a bistro-style menu with entrees ranging from $11 to $20. . . . Piero Selvaggio, who is famous for some of the best wine lists in town, has reduced most of the wine prices at Primi by half the normal markup. . . . Le Sanglier in Tarzana is offering a 40% discount Sunset Menu between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays through Oct. 31 . . . And for a $12 minimum order, Chopstix/Malibu is offering free delivery.