L.A. Chefs Find Culinary Claims Tough to Swallow : Food: Restaurateurs dispute Newsweek story that fire, quakes, etc., have sent California’s best dining experiences north.

Who’s eating whose lunch around here?

If you believe a story in the July 18 Newsweek (“S.F. Eats L.A.’s Lunch”), the seat of California’s restaurant power has moved to San Francisco, the Los Angeles scene is dead and our best chefs are heading north. The evidence: L.A.’s recent spate of restaurant closings following several disasters--”a riot, earthquake, fires, recession,” and a few L.A. chefs who “have decided to follow the money.”

But several local restaurateurs are countering the story, and America’s most famous chef, who has long had restaurants in both cities, says it’s all so much rhubarb.

“I think L.A. is getting a bad rap,” says Wolfgang Puck. “Maybe business is a little bit harder now, but just because a place is doing less covers per night doesn’t make the food any less good.”

Thomas Keller, who once constructed towers out of tuna and sculptures from foie gras at L.A.’s Checkers Hotel and has recently become chef-owner of the historic French Laundry in the Napa Valley, admits he misses Southern California. “The only reason I came up here is because of the French Laundry,” he says from his unique Yountville restaurant. “If the French Laundry had been in Los Angeles, I would have stayed.”

And Santa Monica restaurateur John Sedlar, whose quake-damaged Bikini will finally reopen next week as Abiquiu, wouldn’t leave Los Angeles for anything. “I love the energy level here,” Sedlar says. “Life in Los Angeles really sizzles.”

Sedlar was one of the L.A. chefs noted by Newsweek--along with Puck and Citrus’ Michel Richard--who have a San Francisco presence. Sedlar told Newsweek: “The beauty of San Francisco is that it’s very concentrated with hotels and businesses, so lunch is very strong. . . . At lunchtime in Los Angeles you need to have secretary’s prices, but in San Francisco you can have banker’s prices.”

But Newsweek failed to note that the recently opened San Francisco-based branch of Sedlar’s Abiquiu, named for the town near Santa Fe where the restaurateur grew up, was developed by the Kimpton Group. Sedlar is its consultant and has no stake in the Bay Area restaurant.

“I told Newsweek nobody is leaving Los Angeles,” Sedlar says. “We just find it’s good business to have a presence up north.”

And why not? The economy is a bit better in the Bay Area, and by now it’s been almost five years since the Loma Prieta earthquake.

But the dining dollars are not as green as Newsweek makes them out to be. According to the California Restaurant Assn. figures quoted in the magazine, San Franciscans spent $1,536 per capita eating out in 1992 (the latest figures available), while Los Angeles diners spent only half that amount. But Newsweek didn’t consider median income. According to 1993 U.S. Government figures, the median income for a family of four in L.A. is $44,600, while San Francisco’s is $54,300.

“San Francisco has a huge single, white, gay population that has money and goes out all the time,” says Bruce Cost, who closed his formal Monsoon restaurant there in 1992 and now runs the lower-priced Ginger Island in Berkeley. “The streets of San Francisco are lined with BMWs.”

The article also didn’t point out that liquor sales were included in the per capita figures. “In San Francisco everybody takes taxis and drinks a lot more,” says Bruce Marder, who owns the West Beach Cafe in Venice.

Also excluded from Newsweek was the fact that the per capita numbers were based on resident population only. “If you added in the number of tourists,” says CRA’s Scott Read, “it would have more of an impact on San Francisco than Los Angeles. It would definitely lower the San Francisco’s per capita figure.”

In addition to the thousands of tourists who continue to visit, San Francisco also does a tremendous convention business. “Whenever there’s a doctors’ convention (in town), restaurants are packed for three or four days,” says Traci Des Jardin, who cooked at Patina in Los Angeles and is now chef at Rubicon--a new, celebrity-backed French restaurant in San Francisco.

But, she says, the really adventurous diners are in Los Angeles. “People are heartier eaters in San Francisco, but they are more grounded in tradition. They still order sweet breads and oxtails and things like that, while L.A. diners are open to an eclectic style of food.”

“I always thought that Monsoon would have done well in Los Angeles,” says Cost about his short-lived innovative Chinese restaurant. “We had a lot of L.A. people flying up here to eat whole catfish and tea-smoked duck.”

Keller is still counting on his former home for business at his new Napa Valley digs. “If Los Angeles was dead, I’d be dead up here,” he says. “L.A. has that much impact.”

Los Angeles has lost some of its better restaurants due to attrition, the recession and other troubles, but a good many have also survived: Rex, Michael’s, Chaya Brasserie, Chianti, Dan Tana’s, Morton’s and the Grill have all been around more than 10 years; Musso & Frank has been a Hollywood hangout forever. And there are now a number of unpretentious, new places where one can eat well at friendlier prices too: Drai’s, Twin Palms, Jackson’s, Vida, Woodside, Nouveau Cafe Blanc, Reed’s and Descanso, to name a few.

“We shouldn’t consider ourselves second to anybody,” Puck says. “There’s no better French restaurant around than L’Orangerie. And our Spago and Chinois are as good as any. Everyone from all over the world comes here to eat. And look at our Japanese restaurants--Nobo’s (Matsuhisa) and Ginza Sushi-Ko are as good as any in America.

“I think we have to believe in ourselves and then everybody will believe in us.”