Restaurateurs Breathing Easier Over L.A. Smoking Restrictions

The proposal for a new Los Angeles smoking ordinance blew over the city’s restaurant landscape like a pale, wispy puff from a low-tar cigarette.

From upscale bistros to stick-to-your-ribs steak joints, restaurateurs who had worried that the city might pass a total ban on smoking exhaled a collective sigh of relief over the proposed compromise ordinance, which would increase the required nonsmoking seating in a restaurant from 50% to 60%.

“We don’t have any problem with that at all,” said Jean-Jacques Retourne, general manager of Citrus on Melrose Avenue.

“No problem,” said Alfredo Magallanes, manager of the Crest Coffee Shop on Sunset Boulevard.

“It won’t affect me either way,” said Saratoga Restaurant owner Nick Vasily, explaining that he has not yet bothered to comply with the original 50% law.

For most restaurant owners, the increase in nonsmoking seating would be a small price to pay to avoid the outright ban on restaurant smoking that was also proposed.

Retourne said outlawing smoking would have driven a sizable percentage of clients to other cities, such as Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.

But the increase from 50% to 60% nonsmoking seating would probably mean shifting a few chairs around the dining room--if that, since, with the decreasing number of smokers, most restaurants already set aside the majority of their tables for nonsmokers.

“That’s pretty much what everyone is doing already,” Retourne said. fair.

The proposed ordinance--which the City Council ordered drafted Tuesday--would one new wrinkle to smoking regulations--the requirement that restaurants now post whether smoking is allowed on the premises.

But Retourne predicted that measure also would have little effect on business.

“We’ll just put the sign out there on the front door,” he said. “It won’t change anything.”

At the upscale Le Chardonnay, owner Robert Bigonnet was happy with the proposed new ordinance, since already three-quarters of his tables are set aside for nonsmokers and he would have to make no changes at all.

“This is exactly what I was hoping they’d pass,” he said. “Why would anyone have a problem complying with it?”

Even Vasily, who has never set aside a nonsmoking area in his restaurant, said it would be easy to conform with the law--if he is ordered to do so.

Vasily admits that for the three years he has owned the Saratoga--a hangout for real estate developers, City Hall politicos and police officials--smoking has been allowed in all sections of the restaurant.

Even with his steady clientele of city attorneys, prosecutors and LAPD officials, no one has ever mentioned the ordinance, he said.

Vasily could face a maximum $1,000 fine and six months in jail for violating the ordinance. But city officials concede that enforcement has been lax.

The closest thing to a smoking rule in the Saratoga is the informal agreement that cigar smokers keep close to the bar.

Vasily said that if ordered by the city, he would have no problem converting a separate banquet room to nonsmoking.

“If they send me a note, I’ll do it. But as long as they don’t bother me, fine.”