Marder’s Big Dream: A Special Little Place

As owner of West Beach Cafe and Rebecca’s--both in Venice--co-owner of Broadway Deli in Santa Monica and consultant to the soon-to-open fusion at pdc in West Los Angeles, Bruce Marder has plenty on his plate these days. The poor guy barely has time for a daily workout, much less 18 holes of golf. But that doesn’t mean he thinks everybody else should be slaves to their jobs. Just like any other chef-restaurateur, what Marder really dreams about is a small place where the kitchen has the luxury to cook special food for a limited audience.

Now Marder has found that restaurant. He’s leased the concrete brick building behind Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica where the Mucky Duck once dispensed English ale. Now he’s waiting to see if the city will issue him the conditional-use permit needed to open.

In the meantime, Marder has already designed the space. The restaurant will have no more than 15 employees, be open only five nights a week and close for one month out of the year. He’s even come up with the name--Lido, after the small isle in Venice, Italy, where everybody flocks to sunbathe. Now all he needs is a dynamite chef.

“It’s a dream job for somebody,” Marder says. “The chef will have total artistic control. He’ll make a lot of money. Plus, he gets a month off. It’s a real life for a chef is what it is. Can you imagine?” Cattle call. Everyone need apply.

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Rough Seas: Angeli Mare, the noisy Italian seafood restaurant that opened six years ago in Marina del Rey, has closed. Angeli Caffe on Melrose, the original--and last--of Evan Kleiman’s much-copied rustic Italian restaurants is still going strong. Angeli in the Rodeo Collection closed in 1993, followed by Trattoria Angeli in West L.A., which folded last year.

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Tortilla CPA: Ron Salisbury just did his calculations and reports that since El Cholo opened 68 years ago, customers have eaten their way through more than 922 million tortillas--and every single one of them has come from Ideal Tortilla in East L.A.

“My grandparents actually started buying them from [owner] Eddie Gonzales’ parents in 1923 when they first got into the restaurant,” says Salisbury, calculator in hand. “If you piled all of the tortillas on top of each other, they would equal 6,146 Empire State Buildings or circle the globe 3 1/2 times!” Go figure.

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Chef Moves: Russell Scott, formerly of Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, is now in charge of the kitchen at Pangaea on La Cienega. . . . Elka Gilmore, who cooked at Camelions, Tumbleweed, Checkers and Palette--all in the L.A. area--is no longer associated with the 2-year-old restaurant at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco’s Japan Town that bears her name. Gilmore continues to run Liberte, the French restaurant she opened a year ago in collaboration with the Kimpton Group, the San Francisco-based restaurant and hotel management company.

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Stockpot: 555 East in Long Beach, a New York-style steakhouse, became Dominick’s East Village, an Italian family-style restaurant. In case you haven’t heard, the owners have changed their minds again. They’ve converted the place back to 555 East. . . . The American Lung Assn. of Los Angeles County has come out with a smoke-free entertainment and dining guide to more than 100 L.A.-area clubs and coffeehouses. For a free copy, call the American Lung Assn. at (213) 935-5864.

For more restaurant coverage, please see Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Magazine and Thursday’s Food Section.