Koeberle Back on Tap at Tapenade

What goes around comes around: Claude Koeberle is back at Tapenade, the restaurant at Rancho Santa Fe, the tony tennis resort in Rancho Valencia. Koeberle, who consulted on the menu three years ago, replaces executive chef Salvatore Petrolino, who replaced Claude Segal just six months ago.

Why has the independently run restaurant been playing a game of musical chefs? “Different managers, different directions,” says Koeberle, who was himself recently replaced at the Surf ‘n’ Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach. “Now the ownership wants to show some commitment here.”

Koeberle has changed the menu, but says it will be about a month before the changes are complete. The menu will be his signature blend of the cuisines of France, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Italy, along with old classics such as pepper steak and Dover sole.

Koeberle, who should be familiar to anybody who’s spent much time in Southern California restaurants (some of the places he’s cooked include Ma Maison, L’Orangerie, Les Anges, Tamayo, Opera and his own 30th Street Bistro in Newport Beach), is most famous for dumping a pail of water on pastry chef Anne Sprecher at Ma Maison. “Ahhh, the monster and the bucket and the skylight,” says Koeberle. “I am no angel, but that’s not what happened. Anne used to be very, very dirty when she was working with chocolate, it was always on her hair, her jacket and everywhere else. I said, ‘Look, every time you get dirty, you are going to have to change your jacket and apron.’ But she wouldn’t change. So I threw the water on her, and she remembered after that. She and I are friends and she’s followed me to three restaurants; it’s not like she was a martyr.”

REHEARSAL DINNERS: If you want to catch Michel Richard’s act on a new stage, check out West Beach Cafe on four Monday nights in June. The man whose peers named him best regional chef in California at the James Beard Awards last month, will be cooking at his partner’s restaurant (Richard owns Broadway Deli with Bruce Marder, owner of West Beach).

“I want to try out a few bistro dishes to see what the reaction will be,” says Richard. “If it’s good, maybe I’ll open a bistro like Joachim.” (Joachim Splichal of Patina plans to open a French bistro, Pinot, on the site of the former La Serre this fall in Studio City.) Richard will look for a location somewhere in the Los Angles area, “but not the Valley,” he says. “That’s Joachim’s territory.”

Does Richard plan to turn the tables and invite Marder to come cook at Citrus? “I don’t know,” hedges Richard. “We’ll have to talk about it.”

GONE WITH THE WIND: “Monsoon was great but it was in the back of a concrete mall, way off the street,” says Bruce Cost, who is leaving his 2-year-old San Francisco Chinese restaurant. “I wanted to do something else and my two partners don’t want to close it.” So Cost will change the menu to a simpler format and help with the transition. Then he’s on his own.

Cost, who was nominated for a James Beard award as best regional chef in California two years in a row, says he would like to open another restaurant. “I was talking to Susie Nelson at the Fourth Street Grill, because she wants to get out of San Francisco and go to Mexico, I’ve talked to some people about designing a prototype for an inexpensive Asian restaurant, and I talked to Ken Hom about some joint projects in Los Angeles.”

Cost has even been wooed by the City of Beverly Hills: The director of public affairs for the city offered help if he wanted to move south. “I always felt Monsoon would be better in L.A.,” says Cost. “There’s a segment of the San Francisco community that is extremely conservative. When people come up from L.A., even the furniture dealers order my whole catfish and ducks and stuff like that.”

STOCKPOT: Da Toto, an offshoot of Da Pasquale in Beverly Hills, has opened in Van Nuys on Sepulveda Boulevard. . . . SOUL on melrose, set to open in the old Pomegranate space hasn’t, due to investor problems, but “progress is being made,” says the restaurant’s spokeswoman. . . . And the Los Angeles Garlic Festival, which benefits the American Legion, Heal the Bay and Phoenix House, will be held at the Federal Building in Westwood July 18 and 19.