Waiter, There’s a Card in My Soup!

Bad-boy magicians Penn & Teller have persuaded restaurants all around the world--including our own Campanile, San Francisco’s Bix, Chicago’s Hatdance and New York’s Trattoria del Arte--to participate in their new book, “How to Play With Your Food.”

In return for cooperating with the “James Bond Fancy-Schmancy Restaurant Card Trick,” Penn & Teller list the places as the “16 coolest fancy restaurants in the world” in their book, and promise to make personal appearances at the restaurants when they come to town to promote it.

Here’s the trick: You take a friend into one of the participating restaurants and ask your waiter for a deck of cards. (The malicious duo have promised to keep the restaurants indefinitely supplied.) You then have your companion pick a card and replace it in the deck. Hocus-pocus--when your meal arrives, there’s the very same card stuck in your friend’s osso buco !

“We are involved because some of our very best customers are big fans of Penn & Teller,” says Campanile’s Nancy Silverton. “We have our Penn & Teller box downstairs,” but so far no one has asked for a deck of cards.

There are other good tricks in “How to Play With Your Food.” Plunk down $20 for the book and you also get an indestructible packet of sugar, a plate lifter (you stick it under someone’s plate, pump it, and it lifts the plate off the table), fake nutrition labels and silly fortune cookies.

How does the James Bond trick work? It’s all in the book, says Jacqueline Deval, spokeswoman for publisher Villard Books. “Whenever someone selects a card from a deck, it just seems to be at random. It never is. They just don’t realize they’ve been forced to pick the card.”

That’s magic.

TOM AND ROSIE’S: Aspiring restaurateurs may want to consider Eldon, Iowa. The town (pop. 1,070) is much more welcoming than most places in the Southland. City Clerk Pat Thomas says when Roseanne and Tom Arnold decided to open their own diner, they didn’t even need to apply for city permits or licenses. That’s because they’re remodeling a pizza parlor. Had they been building from scratch, she says, it would have been a different matter. In that case, the Arnolds would have been forced to pay a $5 building permit fee.

The Arnolds are no strangers to building in Iowa--they’re also in the process of building Iowa’s largest house. “Haven’t you heard about that huge house they’re building?” Thomas inquires. “It’s about a $10 million castle--even bigger than the governor’s mansion. I’ll tell you,” she adds, “a UPS man asked a construction worker when the Arnold’s lake was going to be filled in. He told him, ‘That’s not the lake, that’s the basement.”’

Despite this, Thomas says, the Arnolds are really plain folks. “They dress just like the rest of us. You know, Tom comes from Ottumwa, he went to school with a couple of the Yokum boys.”

Tom and Rosie’s Diner is slated to open the week before Christmas. It will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

CITY LIGHT: “Our feeling is that in the ‘80s there was a lot more excess than in the ‘90s,” says City Restaurant’s Susan Feniger, “so we have been attempting to offer a more well rounded menu with lower prices.” Feniger and partner Mary Sue Milliken have had a breakfast epiphany; you can now wake up in their La Brea Avenue restaurant. They serve sticky rolls ($2.50), eggs, toast and hash browns ($4.50) and more.The chef/owners have also reworked the dinner menu--downward. Current dinner entrees are now $9.75 to $19; a year ago they were $17-$20.

As part of their recession-fighting strategy, the partners say they’ve tossed around the idea of replacing tablecloths with glass tabletops; using paper instead of linen napkins; and expanding staff responsibilities. “Our goal,” Feniger says, “is to pay people more and have them take on more.”

EVEN LIGHTER: The Moustache Cafe has also been doing some trimming. Fernand Page has pruned his anti-inflation menu so that prices on most entrees are what they were when the restaurant opened in 1977. And, for every souffle sold, Page promises to donate $1 to Rebuild L.A.

TURKEY BAGS: Clancy’s Crab Broiler in Glendale is going cold turkey. On Thanksgiving a party of four will get a whole turkey, with all the fixings, for $78.50. They’ll slice it at the table, then pack the leftovers to take home.

HERE TOMORROW: Hans Rockenwagner, of Rockenwagner and Fama, both in Santa Monica, is expanding. He’s about to open Rocken Rolls, a bakery/cafe in the Santa Monica Place food court, and a 6,000-square-foot commercial bakery in Culver City.

GONE TODAY: Carl’s BBQ on Pico near Fairfax, one of Los Angeles best barbecue joints.