The Terminator Pays a Visit to Schatzie’s

There’s big trouble in Schatzieland. According to sources, the door at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s unopened restaurant is already starting to revolve.

“I never actually spoke with anybody from the restaurant, but somebody did call me, through somebody else, to see if I was interested in taking the chef job at Schatzie’s,” says Claude Segal.

Even the peripatetic Segal was surprised at the job offer. The well-known French chef left his job at Tapanade, the independently run restaurant at the Rancho Santa Fe tennis resort in Rancho Valencia, four months ago and is now back consulting at MaBe restaurant in Los Angeles.

“I was surprised because I knew that Lisa (Stalvey) was already there. My friend said he didn’t think they were very happy with the food, and they were looking for somebody. It never got any farther than that.” Segal declined the offer. “I have other things going. It was bad timing.”

August Spier, former managing partner at Bruce Marder’s DC3 restaurant and now general manager at Schatzie’s, says that as far as he knows Segal wasn’t offered the job. Somebody else was, but Spier won’t say who. “Regarding Lisa, we all are very fond of her and we don’t want her to be hurt,” he says. “I have offered the job to someone else, but at the moment I cannot tell you who is coming on board.”

He cannot tell us when the Santa Monica restaurant will open either: The big guy still hasn’t gotten the OK on his liquor license. “We are not going to open for dinner without it,” says Spier. “We may, in about three to four weeks, open for breakfast and lunch.”

CALIFORNIA DREAMING: Before MaBe, before Tapanade (but after Ma Maison and Bistango), Segal did a stint at Four Oaks restaurant. He didn’t stay long. Now one of the original partners, Michel Blanchard, has left too. He has been managing partner at the secluded Four Oaks in Beverly Glen canyon since the glory days in 1987. “Business has gone down, down down. I tried to do something different, change the formula, it was way too expensive, but they don’t understand,” he says. “So I got mad and they said I could leave. It’s California, what can you do?”

Ann Wagner, consultant to the Four Oaks restaurant, tells a different version. “Michel felt that he would like to take some time away. Sometimes the stress gets to everybody,” she says. “Business is not down, I am surprised to hear what Michel is saying and it shocks me. It’s unfortunate, but that’s California.”

HOME COOKING: Ask any chef what he really dreams of, and the answer is the same: A small restaurant, just a few seats, where he can cook special food for special people. Richard Krause, original head chef at Chinois on Main, finally had his dream come true. Between jobs this winter in New York, he took out a small ad and opened up his Lower East Side Manhattan apartment to diners. Krause called the place Show Kitchen, and charged his guests $45 for the privilege of eating his home cooking. “I was using a loft space and I liked the idea of having one large table where people could sit in a group,” he says. “But it was not really a restaurant space, not properly zoned, nothing to use long term.”

For Krause, who has cooked at such well-known New York restaurants as Batons (now closed), Melrose (which he owned) and the Rose Cafe, home cooking was meant to be more than a means of making money. “The showcase idea was a great idea and it was a lot of fun, but there were a few reasons why I did it,” explains the former Los Angeles chef. “To keep my name in the press, to have a lot of potential investors over, and just to have people over for dinner to chat a bit about the future.”

Krause’s Show Kitchen restaurant lasted just five weeks. Then the chef took a job at trendy Rex restaurant in Manhattan and began negotiations to open his own restaurant. “With real estate, things never move at the pace you think they are going to,” says the Southern California native. “But there is one deal in particular that I am very excited about. I am not saying anything about it yet, except that we would probably be with the partners at Rex.”

So what’s Krause cooking? “You can call it California food in California,” he says. “But if you move to the East Coast, it becomes Contemporary American.”

NOT A-MUSING: If you are planning a meal at Muse, you might want to leave your plastic at home. Beginning this month, the Los Angeles restaurant is adding an additional 3% charge for those who pay by credit card. “It keeps down the food cost, and also lets people have the option of using credit cards,” says Tom Knutson of Muse, who adds that Muse is not the first restaurant to instigate an additional charge for paying by credit card. “We know of a lot that started doing this on the East Coast, and they are doing it in the Midwest and the San Francisco area.” Any other L.A. restaurants? Admits Knutson, “None that I know of.”

* SUPER SUNDAY: First Impressions is taking the day off and will return next Sunday.