First-Place Menu Takes a Page From Prehistory

Restaurants these days all seem to seek the cutting edge. Not Pangaea of Beverly Hills. This eatery was named for the hypothetical single landmass that split apart

200 million years ago to form the present-day continents.

Pangaea has a modern side too, taking first place in the 1994 National Restaurant Assn.’s “great menu contest” over 700 other U.S. and Canadian restaurants in a carte to carte battle for the title.

Its winning entry featured dried raffia leaves and depictions of primitive cave drawings, which successfully replicated, according to the contest judges, the restaurant’s multiethnic culinary theme.

The upscale restaurant will receive no monetary reward but will enjoy “honor and distinction,” said a spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Assn., which has held the annual competition for more than three decades.

So even though it didn’t make millions, Pangaea learned what Spielberg surely knows: Prehistoric pays.

*

AVIAN A.P.B.: If you hear a bird whistling Beethoven, Nancy Lee Lamb wants to know.

Lamb, a Santa Monica College student, has lost her pet, Buster, a foot-tall 4-year-old Nape Amazon parrot that was a fixture in the Santa Monica College music department.

The bird, which has bright-green feathers and splashes of yellow on his head, has been missing since Sept. 1; Lamb suspects he was stolen. She has posted notices in which she offers a $5,000 reward.

Buster has far more than Beethoven in his repertoire, Lamb says. He says “Hello,” “Buster is a bad bird,” “Here kitty, kitty,” “Meow” and more. He can cry, Lamb says, “like a newborn baby” and can do wolf whistles.

Lamb asks anyone with information on Buster’s whereabouts to call (310) 572-4122.

*

ITS HONOR: Pat, the sexually ambiguous character on TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” is about to gain a vast new constituency: the city of West Hollywood.

On Monday, the West Hollywood City Council plans to name Pat honorary mayor so he--or is it she?--can preside over the city’s Halloween Carnaval, a Mardi Gras-style celebration scheduled for Oct. 31.

Off the wall?

Not really. Pat is not a complete stranger to the corridors of power. The actress who plays Pat, Julia Sweeney, is the sister of Jim Sweeney, deputy to West Hollywood Councilman Sal Guarriello.

*

ROMANTIC HEIGHTS: Why isn’t this surprising?

A Santa Monica flying business is now offering “mile-high adventures” in which a couple can rent a twin-engine plane featuring a feather bed, king-size pillows, champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries in a cabin “securely partitioned off from the cockpit.”

When the plane reaches 5,280 feet, a news release from Santa Monica Air Tours says, the pilot rocks the wings “to let the couple know they have reached that ‘golden’ altitude.”

The price, like the flights, is high: $279 per couple for an hour in the air. But, hey, whatever it takes to get a relationship off the ground.