Northern Italy’s Star Chef Coming to the Kitchen at Rex

Next Friday, Gino Angelini, the new chef at Rex il Ristorante downtown, will host a dinner cooked by guest chef Cesare Giaccone, from the Piedmont region of northern Italy. Giaccone’s tiny restaurant Da Cesare in Albaretto Torre was named in 1994 by International Herald Tribune restaurant critic Patricia Wells as one of the 10 best restaurants in the world.

At home in Piedmont, Giaccone scours the countryside for goat raised on sweet spring grasses, for dusky porcini and delicate ovoli mushrooms, for guinea hen and wild duck. It’s not a fancy place and he cooks every dish himself.

Steeped in a love for this region of white truffles, fog-shrouded vineyards and the noble red wines of Barbaresco and Barolo, Cesare is an original, highly inventive cook, who is, at the same time, completely true to the spirit of Piedmontese cooking. Signature dishes include peaches and porcini, potato cooked in the embers with a splash of grappa, guinea hen cooked under a coverlet of wheat berries and young goat, spit-roasted over a wood fire.

However, the menu for his evening in Los Angeles won’t be set until he has an opportunity to experiment with local ingredients when he arrives next week. If his cooking here is anything like what he turns out in Italy, the meal should be a knockout.

Cost of the dinner and wines is $120 per person, not including tax and gratuity.

Super Bowl Sushi Bowl: Typhoon at the Santa Monica Airport will host its fifth annual Sushi Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, Jan. 28. Catch the game on a big projection screen while scarfing down an all-you-can-eat sushi feast prepared by master sushi chef Katsu and his all-star team from Katsu 3rd in West Hollywood.

The door opens a half-hour before the big game begins. The sushi and football fest is $32 per person; $16 for children under 12.

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Russian Repast: To celebrate the St. Petersburg Philharmonic’s appearance at the Music Center on Monday and Tuesday, Impresario Ristorante e Bar and Otto’s Grill & Beer Bar in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will offer a prix fixe Russian meal before each concert.

Impresario’s $35 three-course feast includes buckwheat blini garnished with beluga and osetra caviars, salmon coulibiac or beef Stroganoff and a frozen strawberry parfait torte; the $25 menu at Otto’s begins with borscht with pickled herring, followed by lamb, pork and beef shashlik braised with peppers, onions and vodka, and a poppy seed and pear dessert.

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New Stars: The 1996 Mobil Travel Guide has just been published and there are some significant ratings changes for Los Angeles restaurants. L’Orangerie leaps from three stars to five stars, the guide’s highest rating and the sole restaurant in the Los Angeles area to have it. The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel and the Peninsula in Beverly Hills both retain their five-star lodging rating.

Meanwhile, Patina, the Dining Room in the Regent Beverly Wilshire, Rex il Ristorante, Abiquiu and Fenix at the Argyle--and the Stonehouse at San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara--have been awarded a four-star rating for the first time. Since every single California restaurant retaining four-star status for 1996 is from northern California, Los Angeles restaurants are finally getting some respect in the new guide.

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Last Edition for the Chronicle: After 25 years, owner Lud Renick is closing the doors of the Chronicle Restaurant in Pasadena. Known for its extensive wine cellar and turn-of-the-century decor, The Chronicle has been purchased by Joachim and Christine Splichal who will open Pinot at the Chronicle later this year. Meanwhile, the venerable Pasadena restaurant remains open until the end of the month. On Jan. 31, the Renick family will host a closing gala to benefit the staff of the Chronicle. It sounds like a good party: For $50 a person, the Renicks will provide a buffet, champagne, wine and liquor--and music. Though the parking lot will be tented to add more space, they can only accommodate 500. . . . And on Feb. 3, starting at 9 a.m., the remains of the restaurant’s wine cellar, which once held 70,000 bottles and won numerous Wine Spectator awards, will be for sale.