Checkers Has Lost Its Chef

Super-chef Thomas Keller, who moved from New York last year to take over the kitchen at Checkers, has left the downtown hotel. According to restaurant sources, Keller had been unhappy at the hotel since its change in management. Keller, who could not be reached for comment, told The Times in April that the Kempinski group had not renewed his contract.

Keller’s replacement, William Valentine, is the former executive sous-chef of the Grill Room at the Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans. “There won’t be any great changes in the food presentation,” says Volker Ulrich, regional vice president and general manager of Checkers Hotel Kempinski. “We will build on what Thomas has created.” Ulrich refused to comment on the reason for Keller’s sudden departure.

Asked how the hotel had found a replacement for Keller so quickly, Ulrich said, “I think it was just a coincidence.”

A NEW ACT: The big news from the East Coast is Daniel Boulud’s announcement that he is leaving Le Cirque, one of the most powerful dining rooms in New York. The young French chef, who has been cooking at the restaurant since 1986, plans to open his own place in the former Les Pleiades site on the East Side. Le Cirque’s manager, Benito, says Boulud probably won’t be leaving until September. “But,” he says, “we have another chef and he has been here from the beginning, so there will be no changes whatsoever.”

VANITY FARE: After perusing Patina’s dessert menu and spotting a caramelized Dole banana tarte with banana and chocolate sorbet, one customer wondered whether restaurant business has gotten so bad that owners are beginning to accept advertising. No, insists Joachim Splichal, chef and owner of the restaurant: The dessert is a tribute to David Murdock, majority owner of Dole Foods--and an investor in the Los Angeles restaurant. “It is a long story,” explains Splichal, “but David Murdock has been very good to me. But please don’t say that because then each investor will want a dish. All of a sudden we will have to call it the carrots out of Mr. Diener’s garden, and the basil from Joe Smith. It will be too difficult. . . .”

GONE AGAIN: “I left Brentwood Bar & Grill for a number of reasons,” says chef Margaret Fischlein, “but the final straw was when Bob Burns opened the restaurant on that Saturday during the Los Angeles riots. It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I have been looking for another job ever since.”

Fischlein, who was opening chef at the short-lived Stringfellow’s in Beverly Hills, and one of the wanna-be chefs at Arnold Schwartzenegger’s Schatzi, is moving on to Ava’s, a restaurant/nightclub opening in the basement of the Beverly Center (where Tramps used to be). “There is a back room with a pool table,” says Fischlein, “an espresso bar, and the front dining room is very big with large, comfortable booths and high ceilings. I am really excited to do a new opening. Right now as far as positions for chefs go, there really isn’t all that much out there. This kind of grabbed me.”

COOKING FOR MORE: Mario’s Cooking for Friends, the Beverly Boulevard restaurant/deli/market that specializes in Italian food, will open two branches in downtown Los Angeles: a restaurant in the historic Bradbury Building and a take-out place in Grand Central Market.

John Shegerian, vice president of the Yellin Co. (which owns and manages both spaces), says other plans for the Market include a total makeover of La Hood’s juice bar, which is owned by comedian Flip Wilson. “It will be renamed Geraldine’s,” says Shegerian, after the sassy character played by Wilson in his TV series, “and there will be Geraldine videos playing all day.”

BITTERSWEET: The world’s best chocolate shop is Bernachon in Lyon, France. It is among the handful of confectionary shops that still make their own chocolate out of cocoa beans. The good news is that Christophe Lilienfeld, a former Bernachon pastry chef, has come to Los Angeles to take charge of desserts at L’Orangerie. The bad news is that Lilienfeld won’t be using Bernachon chocolate. “Right now we are going with what we have here” (the restaurant uses Valrhona), says owner Gerard Ferry. “We have to see if it’s possible to bring the chocolate.”

Other changes are also in the works at L’Orangerie. Come fall, Ferry will open his restaurant for lunch. “I used to stay open, but it was too much work and I wanted to enjoy life here in Los Angeles,” he says. “Now that I know life in Los Angeles, I want to go back to work.”

HOLD THE PASTRAMI: Say hello to Pavarotti and Stein, a combination classic Italian and Jewish restaurant. “It’s what we did in our restaurants in Argentina,” says Enrique Borensztein, “and they were a big success.” Now he and his wife, Cora, have bought Collage, the one-time gas station and restaurant in Long Beach. The Borenszteins plan to serve homemade breads, fresh pastas and chopped chicken liver. They insist that their place is not a deli. “Ours is very elegant with linen and glassware,” explains Enrique. “We don’t serve pastrami sandwiches.”

STINKING ROSE: To coincide with Los Angeles’ upcoming garlic festival (July 18 and 19), La Toque’s Ken Frank will once again prepare his all-garlic, four-course prix-fixe menu ($36), beginning July 6 for the rest of the month. . . . In a similar vein, Restaurant Antoine in Le Meridien Newport Beach offers its all-bean prix-fixe ($48) menu during the month of July: cassoulet of escargots, sweetbread salad with French beans, roasted monkfish in black bean sauce, grilled squab with fava beans, and white bean jam with fresh fruit fritter for dessert. . . . And Bernard Jacoupy of Lunaria in West L.A. offers a bargain three-course Sunday supper, from 5:30 until closing. Dinner includes choice of soup or salad or small Caesar salad, choice of entrees and a dessert off the regular menu. The cost is $12.95.