Chefs Find Their Isle of Capri in Venice

Josiah Citrin and Raphael Lunetta have been friends since the fourth grade. They’ve been cooking together for years, both in France and Los Angeles. In the past few years one or the other has worked at Broadway Deli, Granita and Chinois; they’ve cooking been together in their most recent job at Joachim Splichal’s Patina. Now they’ve moved on to be co-chefs at Capri, the little Italian place on Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard. “We’ve been working at this deal for a long time,” says Citrin, “but we had to finish our commitment with Joachim.”

First off they’re going to tackle the menu. “The owner really wants it to be Italian,” says Citrin, “so there will have to be some pasta dishes.” Other new dishes include salmon unilateral (where have we seen this salmon cooked from the bottom up before?), artichoke with braised fennel, seared scallops on crispy leek cakes and rack of lamb. Citrin plans to buy his lamb from the same purveyor that sells to Patina.

But the food, Citrin emphasizes, will not be Patina fare. “It will be our own food,” he says. “Of course, there will be mashed potatoes, but it will be only the technique we learned from Joachim.”

AVERY/AVERY: Avery Restaurant Supply, the company that sells everything from stoves to soup spoons to the best home chefs and the best restaurants, has filed for Chapter 7 liquidation, citing $1 million in debts. “There’s a new corporation called Avery Kitchens,” says Geraldine Leal, Avery’s chief administrative officer. “Some of the principals are different.” Shel Brucker, however, will continue as president, and the supplier will continue doing business-as before, with one exception: Avery will no longer offer credit. “We got caught by the recession,” says Leal, “and a lot of bankruptcies.”

FALLEN ANGELI: “I kept seeing this debt mounting up and that I was going to be personally responsible for it,” says Evan Kleiman. “I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, so I just thought, ‘OK, pull the plug now.’ ” So Kleiman closed Angeli in the Rodeo Collection, the fourth--and latest--of her much-copied cafes, while she was still able to pay her bills. Although the space had a gorgeous patio and safe parking, Kleiman says she failed to consider that the restaurant was located off the street and that Beverly Hills ordinances prohibited her from posting any signage. “It proved to be a bad location,” Kleiman says. “Anyhow, three is my lucky number.”

NEWS FROM THE NORTH: San Francisco’s former Fourth Street Grill has become Ginger Island, a tropical Asian restaurant with food by Bruce Cost and Lisa Schultz, the former chef/owner and head chef of that city’s Monsoon. . . . David Kinch, who cooked at New York’s Quilted Giraffe, one of the premier--restaurants in the country, and at San Francisco Silks is the new executive chef at Ernie’s Restaurant, a San Francisco institution.

STOCKPOT: When Broadway Deli suddenly pulled out of the Courtyard in Encino, 22 restaurants showed interest in the vacated space, including El Cholo, Tribeca, Ruth Chris’ Steak House, Cha Cha Cha and Crocodile Cantina. “We finally narrowed it down to El Cholo and Tribeca,” says the center’s Doane Liu. So in approximately three months, the time it takes to apply a few cosmetics and transfer the liquor license, Tribeca will open for lunch and dinner daily in the space. . . . Joe D. Cochran, who left Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in September to cook at the Surf & Sand in Laguna Beach, is now cooking inland at the historic Mission Inn in Riverside. . . . “Monday’s our slowest day,” says Luma owner Eric Stapelman. So the Santa Monica restaurant has copied New York and introduced a three-course Sunday and Monday night prix-fixe ($19.93) dinner menu. “People are digging it,” says Stapelman. This Monday we did 85 covers. Normally we do 30-35.”

REOPENED: It used to be that when you walked into Sushi Imai, a Japantown institution famed for guarding tradition, and asked for California Roll you were greeted with a blank stare. If you insisted, Imai-san told you he didn’t know what it was. But three years ago the building at 359 E. 1st St. closed for renovations, and when the restaurant reopened last month, things had changed. The prices are lower. The menu is in English. And listed right there, where everyone can read it, is California Roll.