Coffee, Bagels Chinese? : 4 Restaurants, Retail Center Planned for Chasen’s Site
Four new restaurants covering a variety of price ranges and formats are planned for the site of Chasen’s, the legendary West Hollywood restaurant for the rich, famous and powerful that closed just over a year ago after an extended farewell.
Restaurateur Michael Chow, who opened the trendy Chinese restaurant Mr. Chow in London in 1968 and a Beverly Hills branch in 1974, says the new restaurants will be part of Beverly West Square, a 94,000-square-foot retail center to be developed by Ira Smedra of Beverly West Square Associates.
According to Mark Brown, zoning consultant for the project, construction is scheduled to begin late this year, pending zoning approvals from the city of West Hollywood.
The two-story retail center, with two levels of parking below ground, is designed by the Santa Monica firm Aleks Istanbullu John Kaliski Architecture and City Design. Kaliski is former principal architect for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency.
A Ralphs market and Long’s drugstore will occupy the top floor of the retail center. Chow’s four restaurants and other businesses will be at street level, including a Starbucks coffee outlet, a SuperCrown bookstore and the hot new bagel purveyor, Noah’s Bagels.
Chow said he has spent the past six months designing the four new establishments.
“That location has such an incredible history to it,” he said. “I thought it was sort of my duty to keep it going. Chasen’s has hosted everyone--Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan.”
The 80-seat high-end restaurant in the new complex will be called The Club, a name that connotes exclusivity, Chow said.
“I want to create something that will be in the spirit of Chasen’s, without replicating it exactly,” he said. “It will be an homage to Chasen’s. . . . It’s not going to be the same menu. But in that direction.”
He said the other restaurants will include a Mr. Chow Cafe, which he describes as more affordable, in the tradition of the Wolfgang Puck Cafe; Il Cinese, serving Italian food, with some Asian influences, and a small English deli--”very chic, with waiters in straw hats and a very special look to it.”
For the past year, Chasen’s has sat shuttered--its parking lot empty--except for occasional events such as Ronald Reagan’s 85th birthday or a post-Grammy party.
