Chasen’s, Take Two

If Dennis the Menace, the Partridge Family and even tie-dye and bell-bottoms can manage comebacks, well, I guess, so can Chasen’s. After all, the restaurant had legs, which is why Texas businessman Grady Sanders paid good money for the name, recipes and memorabilia of the venerable West Hollywood watering hole. That was after his plans to put a restaurant called the Bistro of Beverly Hills into the former Bistro space were thwarted by the defunct restaurant’s owners, who claimed the word “bistro” as their property.

If he couldn’t ride in on the coattails of the Bistro, why not another legendary Los Angeles institution? One whose name has been linked with countless A-list celebrities? One that counted Clark Gable, Alfred Hitchcock and President Ronald Reagan as regulars?

When I arrived in Los Angeles four years ago, Chasen’s was a moribund relic, with nary a paparazzo posted out front most nights. Yet when the Chasen family decided that the time had come to close (and thus clinch a lucrative real estate deal), all of L.A., it seemed, wanted to say a last goodbye. For the final months of its 59 years, you couldn’t get into the place, until everything came to an abrupt end April 1, 1995.

After Chasen’s was shuttered, I would sometimes drive by and find the place lighted up once more, the valets out front, maybe an elegant tent set up outside. (The owners were renting out the restaurant for parties until construction on a mini-mall started. It still hasn’t.) Then Dave and Maude Chasen’s grandson, Scott McKay, got together with Sanders and struck a deal: Chasen’s would be reborn--this time, in staid Beverly Hills.

But without the waiters, who had known you since you were in short pants, preparing the famous Hobo Steak tableside, the bartender who knew what you wanted to drink even before you ordered or the ladies’ room attendant who handed you a towel, what would be so Chasen’s about the new Chasen’s other than the name?

So far, Sanders has spent upward of $4 million transforming the old Bistro space into a posh ‘40s-style supper club with soft lighting, leather and tapestry booths and banquettes, a coffered ceiling and painstakingly detailed faux finishes on the walls. Upstairs are the bar and lounge, a Ralph Lauren-inspired English fantasy of leather armchairs, paisley, an animal print carpet and a mantel topped with a bronze panther. The Jockey Club, the adjoining members-only cigar retreat managed by McKay, was inaugurated Nov. 1. Sanders isn’t done, though. By the first of the year, he will have turned the loan company next door into a banquet room and nonsmoking bar.

Still, on a slow night, if the pianist stops playing “Maybe You’ll Be There” or “Bali Ha’i,” the whole illusion falls away, and you can’t help noticing how boxy the dining room is, how close some of the tables are to the door and how the maitre d’s post and the grand piano are jammed into a corner.

The place had barely opened in April when the manager and the chef left and another team was ushered in. Other major changes are rumored. The present chef, Andreas Kisler, is very capable, as the food he turned out at Checkers Hotel in downtown L.A. proved. But he hasn’t yet gained full control of the kitchen. Though Kisler has added lighter, more contemporary fare to the Chasen’s menu, it has only marginally improved my overall impression of the food.

My advice? Order anything except the old Chasen’s dishes. Cheese toast, a toasted cottony slice of baguette slathered with sweet butter and melted Parmesan, isn’t nearly good enough to warrant the extra calories. Maude’s salad of romaine, iceberg, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs and Stilton dressing is boring. “Seafood on ice,” at $19.50 a person, is pitifully skimpy: a couple of shrimp, a few bites of lobster, two crab legs and lots of ice. The $14 shrimp cocktail is no bargain either. Chasen’s all-beef chili looks awfully silly heaped in a fragile porcelain bowl. Plus, the chili is the blandest I’ve ever encountered. It’s hard to believe that this dish built Chasen’s--the very chili that Elizabeth Taylor had flown to the set of “Cleopatra” in Egypt.

In the old days, part of the pleasure of ordering Hobo Steak, available only for two (at $34 per person), was watching one of the old pros finish the salt-roasted steak at the table with assured showmanship. Now it just comes cut in thick slices, already plated, with mashed potatoes and a bundle of haricots verts. Without the razzle-dazzle, it’s just another hunk of prime beef. Chicken pot pie is loaded with big pieces of chicken, pearl onions, carrots and other vegetables but would be much better (not to mention edible) if the kitchen halved the flour that turns the gravy into wallpaper paste. Sauteed calves’ liver, however, does pass muster. It’s nicely cooked and garnished with applewood-smoked bacon and sweet, car-amelized onions.

Fortunately, under Kisler, the rest of the menu has been updated considerably. The salad of chunks of Maine lobster tossed with haricots verts in a pistachio-studded vinaigrette is pretty and safe. There’s a fine seared ahi tuna appetizer with an Asian slaw in a gingery dressing. He’s added some modern seafood dishes, such as sauteed escolar with smoked salmon tortellini in a graceful cucumber and lobster nage. And grilled Chilean sea bass with “Israeli couscous,” that is, riso pasta (rice-shaped pasta) studded with pine nuts and dried fruit. One night, I have a good stewed wild boar; on another, medallions of venison in red wine sauce, with braised red cabbage. On still another evening, sauteed veal medallions around a mountain of springy Chinese noodles are combined--bizarrely--with a veal reduction and lemongrass.

In a way, though, the food is irrelevant at the new Chasen’s. The lure here is the chance to spot Hollywood’s elite table-hopping and bask in a little of the glamour borrowed from another era. The name Chasen’s still attracts a certain well-heeled set. Other trendy restaurants are too rude and loud for this crowd, who believe in gracious dining. Service may not be the most attentive or professional, but no one is ever rushed. Chasen’s is a polite place. Yet somehow I leave feeling the same way Gertrude Stein felt about Oakland: There is no there there.

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CHASEN’S

CUISINE: American and continental. AMBIENCE: A reinvention of the legendary West Hollywood watering hole, with gilt, faux finishes, booths and a pianist. BEST DISHES: ahi tuna appetizer, sauteed escolar, grilled Chilean sea bass, game specials. WINE PICK: 1994 Groth Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. FACTS: 246 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills; (310) 858-1200. Dinner daily; lunch weekdays. Appetizers, $7 to $60; main courses, $20 to $34. Corkage $20. Valet parking.