New Direction for a Butter and Egg Man

Chef Roland Gibert, who closed the critically acclaimed Tulipe restaurant in June, is now cooking at the nutritionally correct Luma in Santa Monica. He replaces Robert Smith who left after winning the New Jersey lottery. Like its sister restaurant in New York, dishes at Luma are prepared without milk, sugar, red meat or eggs.

Yes, Gibert is famous for meaty dishes such as brains, sweetbreads and fat-wrapped pig’s trotter stuffed with snails. “I have to give up all that,” Gibert says, “but on my day off, well, I’ll catch up.”

For now, Gibert is experimenting with fish and chicken and squab and pheasant and other feathered creatures. But his biggest challenge, he says, will be making butter- and sugar-free desserts. He hopes to have his menu in effect in about a month.

“It’s like starting over,” Gibert says. “I am not convinced yet.”

AS THE CHEF TURNS: When chef Fred Eric decided to team up with Robert Gadsby to buy Duplex restaurant in Los Feliz, he insisted they work together first. After all, Gadsby was sous - chef at Checkers Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, opening chef at Xiomara in Pasadena, interim chef at Santa Monica’s World Cafe and opening Chef at Pyramid on La Cienega Boulevard’s Restaurant Row--all in one year. So they cooked for awhile at Olive, where Eric was then working, and everything seemed great. Now the partnership is over and Eric, who is currently consulting chef at the Lipp on Melrose, is making plans to open the restaurant without Gadsby. (The property is still in escrow.)

“Olive offered me a great opportunity,” says Gadsby. “So I approached Fred with the idea of me cooking at both places. He said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘You are doing the same thing at the Lipp.’ And he said, ‘That’s none of your business what I am doing.’ So I am going to stay with Olive.”

“We will do something together sooner or later,” adds Eric.

“I predicted (the partnership) would last six months,” says Duplex chef/owner Mark Carter, “but my goodness, it’s minus six months.”

CHANGE OF MENU: David Wilhelm, Orange County’s most visible chef, is out as a director of West Coast Restaurant Ventures, the upscale restaurant group he founded. The company owns and operates various restaurants in Orange County including Kachina, Zuni Grill, Bistro 201 and Diva. “David is still a stockholder and he does some menu development,” says a company spokeswoman. “He is not as actively involved as he was before.” Wilhelm, who also consults on menus, including West Hollywood’s Babylon and Roxbury Club, could not be reached for comment.

FIRE ALARM: Now Mike Green has finally heard it all. Monday, the general manager of Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles got a call from a Steven Jensen of American Express asking that all credit card transactions over the weekend be read to him over the phone. Jensen explained that there were major computer transmission problems because phone lines were down due to the recent fires. “He sounded so good,” says Green. But obviously not good enough. Before Jensen was given any information, Green called American Express. The company had never heard of Jensen. “This one takes the cake,” says Green. “Can you imagine? A couple of hundred credit cards just go out the window.”

CONTEMPO CORELLI: The reservation book at Rex Il Ristorante read like a who’s who of L.A. restaurateurs Thursday a week ago. Celestino Drago, Emilio Baglione, Piero Selveggio, John Sedlar, Patrick Healy, Xiomara Ardolina, Hans Rockenwagner and most of the city’s rich restaurant junkies paid homage to Igles Corelli. The two-star chef of Trigabolo, near Bologna, had come to cook. At the end of the evening, the reviews were mixed. Some raved; others left griping that the food was too bland. “It went over the heads of some people,” says Sedlar, chef/owner of Bikini in Santa Monica. “They just didn’t get the nuances of textures and flavors.”

OPENINGS: Caretta, a Turkish and Continental restaurant in Beverly Hills, now serves lunch and dinner daily. Dinners start at $6.50.