Joe’s Remodel Starts With Chefs’ Reunion

The Last Supper (Before Remodeling): Joe’s restaurant in Venice announced it was just about to remodel about four months ago. Well, the time has come. However, owner Joe Miller will cook one last meal there before he and his construction crew “rip the whole place apart,” as he puts it. On Sunday night, Miller and a handful of chefs who have worked at Joe’s will put together an eight-course meal. Chefs Hans Rockenwagner (Rockenwagner, Santa Monica), Trey Forchet (Georges at the Cove, La Jolla), Jason Knibb (Sundance, Park City, Utah) and Thomas Munoz (JoeJoe’s, Sherman Oaks) will be working their magic on quail, halibut, Italian beets and beef rib-eye, among other things. The tab is $75. Dinner begins at 6 p.m. After the dishes are done Sunday night, Joe’s will be closed until around Nov. 15 while the kitchen, bar and bathrooms are overhauled.

* Joe’s, 1023 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 399-5811.

And Then There Were Six: Pinot Restaurant & Martini Bar in Pasadena has closed. One of Joachim Splichal’s seven Pinot restaurants, it had been revamped into a hipper-sounding venue when it changed its name from Pinot at the Chronicle in June last year, but the martini bar concept didn’t save it. Plans are to move Patina catering (currently in Glendale) to this location. Meanwhile, there are still six Pinots around, including Las Vegas and Napa Valley operations.

Out of the Fire: Getting a lot of buzz on Hollywood Boulevard is a restaurant-gift shop named exIncendo. That’s shop-naming Latin for “from the fire”; in real Latin “from the fire” would be ex incendio. “Everything we do has something to do with fire,” points out owner Ben Cheng. He produces cast aluminum furniture, ceramic dinnerware--he’s supplied Starbucks with all those coffee mugs--and now dinner.

Originally Cheng joined with Jay Fagnano (Tony DiLembo’s partner in the now-closed Indigo) to wholesale biscotti, but the operation has evolved into a restaurant--one with furniture and ceramics for sale in the adjoining space. Lunch ($6 to $9.50) runs to grilled shrimp salad and a roast beef sandwich with caramelized onions. Dinner items like pizzas, pastas, or the pan-roasted pork chop with golden raisins and pine nuts cost from $6 to $15.50.

* ExIncendo, 6282 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; (323) 465-3257.

One More Place for Pie: DuPar’s, the homey coffee shops (started in 1938) at the Farmers Market (3rd and Fairfax, L.A.), on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City and in the Thousand Oaks Inn in Thousand Oaks, will gain a sibling soon. A new Du-Par’s is scheduled to open inside the West Hollywood Ramada Inn (8571 Santa Monica Blvd., just west of La Cienega) around the first week in October. Current owner Shirley Oberst Kauffman’s father worked for initial owners Dunn and Parsons many years ago, (now you know where the name Du-Par’s comes from), so she’s been intimately familiar with the chain all her life. She became an owner right before the Thousand Oaks location reopened in 1994, but this is the first new opening she’s planned. “It’s very exciting,” she tells us. Although the inside sports lots of cherry wood, she’s splashed tangerine and yellow paint around and hung old pie signs on the walls to give it the Du-Par’s feel. “Once I get a few waitresses running around here . . . it will look like a Du-Par’s.” This new location will serve the same classic American home-style food as the other locations, and will also be providing room service for the Ramada Inn it sits inside.

Star Light, Star Bright, Where the Heck Are You Tonight?: In March, Antonio Montana (who used to be the chef at the now-closed Cucina Paradiso in Redondo Beach) and partner Alejandro Romero opened a place called Starlight Cafe in Culver City. It drew a growing clientele, but a few weeks ago it abruptly closed. Some patrons had been told that Starlight would be moving to a new location soon, but nobody’s heard anything about it. And the phone number posted on the door for the curious to call for more information has been disconnected. Hmmm.

When I’m Five: Jean Francois Meteigner is celebrating the fifth birthday of La Cachette (on Little Santa Monica Boulevard near Beverly Glen/Overland Avenue) Sunday. You won’t find confetti or pink streamers, but you will have an eight-course menu paired with eight wines; it’s $150 a head. The party begins at 7 p.m. with champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Dinner proper begins at 7:30 p.m. with seared Japanese hamachi and a white Bordeaux. You have a choice of main courses: roasted venison with sweet potatoes and chestnut puree or filet of Black Angus beef with cocoa beans and red wine balsamic sauce.

* La Cachette, 10506 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City; (310) 470-4992.

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Angela Pettera’s e-mail address is pettera@prodigy.net.