Coral Reef Trims Its Prices and Bushes

As the opening date of Lance Katcher’s Coral Reef Restaurant approached, he was short of funds. So he sent out 4,000 invitations offering half off the regular menu prices during the restaurant’s first week. “I don’t have a lot of money to train the staff,” says Katcher, “so I figured I’d invite lots of people, let them pay half and that way I’d get my staff trained.” (The Coral Reef was scheduled to open last Thursday.)

Katcher didn’t have the money to decorate his new Santa Monica restaurant either. But since the space has been home to two upscale restaurants in the past few years--Opera and Regatta--he left the dining room alone and put his money in the kitchen. He’s even installed a TV camera so customers at the bar can see what’s going on in the kitchen. “I am the wild one on the saute station,” he says.

“We’ve got the hugest menu you’ve ever seen,” says Katcher: “25 appetizers, 18 salads, 18 pastas, entrees, vegetables, chicken, fish, great desserts. We’re even opening a bakery next door.” Katcher, who owns two Truly Yours restaurants in the San Fernando Valley, says the new place is an upscale version of those restaurants. “The concept is perfect,” he says. “Nothing on my menu is over $14.95.”

Katcher did make one major change in the look of the place--he trimmed all the bushes in the front to provide an ocean view. “Low bushes and low prices,” he boasts. “Ivy at the Shore (next door) has all those big bushes and big prices. I mean I went there yesterday and had the crab cakes--they deep-fried them. How rude.”

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE: “I took a walk up to Schatzi, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s place,” says World Cafe chef Robert Gadsby, “and took a look at Michael Rosen’s menu. Nothing unique about it. So I decided I will go all out and try to kick ass on Main.”

In the short time he’s been at World Cafe, Gadsby has changed the menu considerably. Gadsby says, “I upgraded it from that nonsense they had. I put my famous rack of veal on one week just to see how it would go, and it sold out.” At the same time, says Gadsby, he managed to bring down food costs. “It was basically a misuse of the products in the kitchen,” he explains. “Also they were buying the desserts, and you can’t make money that way.” Gadsby, of course, is making his own desserts. “When I put lemon sabayon on the menu,” he laughs, “no one bought it. Then I called it lemon custard and everyone ordered it. It seems like Santa Monica needs to be educated.” (Gadsby was the opening chef at Xiomara in Pasadena.)

Gadsby refuses to cook a burger. “I got so many burns from burgers when I cooked in New York,” he says, “I decided I would never do them again. Well . . . maybe I’ll have some type of burger, but it will be my own version.”

FLAIR PLAY: Meanwhile, over at Xiomara, Christopher Cavallero, who took Gadsby’s place in April, has also moved on. “I knew this was in the plan when I hired him,” says owner Xiomara Ardolina. “He went to France to get his residency papers going. In the meantime I am in the kitchen and I have changed the whole menu.”

Ardolina, who was the chef at her previous restaurant, the Epicurean, says she likes being back in the kitchen. “I should have done it from day one,” she says. “Even if Christopher comes back, I will be the main chef and he will be the sous chef. He did pretty well, but he is French, and a lot of French people don’t have the flair for different food. They are really good the old classical way, but you have to have that California flair. I did a black bean soup with avocados and fried plantains, and that added a little bit of Cuban flair.”