The Tales of Three Chefs, With Apologies to Chaucer

The last we heard from chef Lisa Stalvey, she had just been asked to leave Schatzi on Main, the Santa Monica restaurant owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his wife, Maria Shriver.

Stalvey was so devastated at having been terminated by the Terminator, she left the country to take a temporary job cooking at a large restaurant/nightclub in Reykjavik, Iceland. “What happened at Schatzi kind of destroyed me,” says Stalvey, “but my stay in Iceland cured me.”

Now’s she’s back and cooking in Malibu at Bambu (the name is French-Polynesian slang for fun ), which opened two weeks ago for dinner only. When the weather gets warmer, the restaurant will also open for lunch, and brunch on weekends.

The place is owned by Jeanette and Rikki Farr. Rikki does the sound and lighting for such rock stars as Guns N’ Roses, Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow. His father was the late boxing champion Tommy Farr.

Besides the California/eclectic menu, Bambu also has a 17-seat sushi bar. Go (he only goes by one name), the sushi chef, previously worked at Something Fishy and Zuma Sushi.

Stalvey’s menu features everything from a 20-ounce cowboy steak with mashed potatoes made with low-fat milk to soba noodles with sauteed wild mushrooms, garlic and chile flakes, to sesame-seed-and-garlic-crusted Chilean sea bass. She uses mainly extra virgin olive oil and makes her own vegetable stocks. “I always knew I didn’t want to use a lot of cream or butter,” Stalvey says. “The menu sort came to me while I was in Iceland.”

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The last we heard from Jeanine Coyle, it was 1990, and she and her dog were headed for Guatemala. She had just closed Sabroso, her funky, Venice Beach Mexican restaurant and announced plans to temporarily retire. “It turned out I didn’t get to go anywhere,” she says. “I’ve just been doing a lot of catering.”

But the catering business has been hit hard by the recession, so Coyle is now cooking Sabroso food at Odeon restaurant on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. She is sharing the kitchen with the Odeon chef, but the menus are separate.

“It has been a slow start because Montana Avenue isn’t really my old stomping ground,” Coyle says. In fact, she has had to make a few changes to her menu, including eliminating the lard from the tamales. “I don’t mind because I realize lard is not really good for you,” she says. “I figured this side of town wouldn’t want lard in the food.”

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And the last we heard from Jeff Jackson, he was going to be executive chef at the new Park Hyatt in Santa Monica. The beach hotel was due to open a year ago on the corner of Pico Boulevard and Ocean Avenue. Instead, it went bankrupt during construction, and Jackson was out of a job. He went on to open the restaurant in the Hotel Nikko in Beverly Hills.

Since then, the former Park Hyatt property has been bought at auction by the Edward Thomas Co. The shuttered hotel has been renamed Shutters on the Beach and Jackson is back on board. The restaurant, to open in June, will serve American Modern cuisine.

TOO MANY CRACKS? Cafe Terra Cotta, which opened seven weeks ago in Beverly Hills on the site of the former Noa Noa, has closed. Donna Nordin and Don Luria, who also own Cafe Terra Cottas in Tucson and Scottsdale, say sales were flat at the Beverly Hills restaurant from day one. “We just had some real questions as to how fat it would grow and how long we could hang in there,” Luria says.

“If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t.”

FISH TALES: Columbia River Spring Chinook Salmon, one of the world’s best fish, is due to arrive this weekend. “We are waiting for the bad weather to cease so that the fishing can continue,” said Mathew Stein, executive chef at Water Grill in Los Angeles, at press time. “Everybody up there is on the lookout for fish for us. If they are successful, we will have it by the weekend.”

Stein says prices for the rich, fatty fish will run between $18.50 to $20.50 per dish. In addition to Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles, the salmon will be available at Ocean Avenue Seafood in Santa Monica. Both resturants are owned by the University Restaurant Group. “And, if I get enough,” Stein says, “I’ll probably wind up sharing it with our other two restaurants in Long Beach.” Those restaurants-in-waiting are Pine Avenue Fish House and 555 East.