The Magnificent Seven

Angelini Osteria/GINO ANGELINI

At 14, Gino Angelini was learning to cook in Rimini, the resort town on the Adriatic where he grew up. He came up through the hotel system there, and had been a regional president at the Italian Chefs Assn. when restaurateur Mauro Vincenti discovered him and brought him to Los Angeles to become chef at Rex il Ristorante.

Angelini has been here ever since, following Vincenti’s widow, Maureen, to Vincenti, her Brentwood Italian restaurant, which he helped open. But after decades of cooking for someone else, Angelini finally opened his own place. It’s simply the best new Italian in years because it’s truly Italian--not California-Italian or Italian leaning toward French. This is earthy and sensual Italian food, cooked with passion and finesse.

The current menu may be Angelini Osteria’s best yet. For antipasti, there’s vitello tonnato and warm octopus salad. Primi include a summery lemon-lime risotto with asparagus and mint or tagliatelle with rabbit ragu. He roasts veal shanks in the wood-burning oven and serves tender, sweet cuttlefish with tripe. No wonder Italians are turning up in droves. “He cooks like my mother,” more than one homesick Italian has said. Now the rest of us can all pretend. Angelini Osteria, 7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 297-0070. Entrees, $16 to $30.

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Red Pearl Kitchen/TIM GOODELL

Tim Goodell, 36, may be one of Southern California’s most accomplished chefs trained in French cuisine. Though he’s best known for the formal Aubergine in Newport Beach, he still knows how to kick back. He grew up in Orange County, so the siren call of sand and surf is hardly surprising. He also has Troquet, a bistro at South Coast Plaza. So he and partner-wife Liza had something different in mind for their third restaurant: fun and casual, the kind of place where you could relax after a long day.

And that’s what Red Pearl Kitchen is. Housed in an old brick building in downtown Huntington Beach, the restaurant is awash in red silk lampshades, which set the raucous scene. Goodell adds Asian touches to his menus with brilliant effect, and he relished the idea of doing something more playful with Asian cuisine.

Red Pearl tempts the beach crowd with lots of little dishes to share--Shanghai skillet-steamed dumplings, Vietnamese spring rolls and winning Chinese five-spice pork short ribs with Thai basil, to name a few. There are bowls of soup thick with noodles, and a terrific dish of Chinese sweet sausage, rice noodles and lemon grass. Some people stop right there, but if you’re really hungry, order up beef filet with wide rice noodles in a black bean and oyster sauce or the tangerine peel chicken with bird’s eye chile. Save room

for pastry chef Shelly Register’s kaffir lime and lemon grass panna cotta. Red Pearl Kitchen, 412 Walnut St., Huntington Beach; (714) 969-0224. Entrees, $8 to $17.

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Jar/ SUZANNE TRACHT

Women are rare among head chefs at top restaurants. Nevertheless Suzanne Tracht was chef de cuisine at Campanile and opening chef at Jozu, where she indulged an interest in fusing Asian cuisine with California style and ingredients. After her Campanile days, she and Mark Peel, who is chef and co-owner of Campanile, talked about opening a restaurant together. Before they had a space, they had a name: Jar. And by the time the former Indochine space on Beverly Boulevard came up for lease, the two were ready to jump. The result is a terrific American chophouse in a pared-down contemporary setting, with classic cocktails that draw a young industry crowd.

But the real action is in the kitchen. Tracht cooks food for people who like to eat: perfectly fried Ipswich clams, bright-tasting lobster cocktails, a salad of haricots verts and shiitake mushrooms fenced in with Parma prosciutto. She’s got sand dabs, a seductive marinated skirt steak and a bone-in New York strip as well as an uptown pot roast made with boned short ribs. Her sides are delightful, too, from pea tendrils with garlic to a potato au gratin, and a mix of English peas, crimini mushrooms and pearl onions. As for her desserts, oh, the choices. Strawberry pie with creme fra’che whipped cream or banana cream pie? Or, better yet, that velvety chocolate pudding? Jar, 8225 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 655-6566. Entrees, $19 to $29.

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Cobras & Matadors/STEVEN ARROYO

Steven Arroyo isn’t afraid to change his mind. When Boxer, his clubby California restaurant across from CBS headquarters on Beverly Boulevard, faltered after the departures of Neal Fraser and then Brooke Williamson, he simply regrouped and opened something less chef-driven and closer to his heart--a tapas restaurant called Cobras & Matadors.

“I’m a very casual person and it’s a casual environment,” says Arroyo, who decorated the space with black-and-white photos of his family in the ‘20s. He and 21-year-old chef Cristian Martinez have created a menu of little dishes and savories designed for sharing: gazpacho, grilled octopus with green sauce, albondigas (meatballs), wood-oven roasted mushrooms, mussels and chorizo. Next door at his wine shop, Bicentennial 13, the wines are exclusively Spanish (the first such shop in the nation), where reasonably priced bottles can be purchased and enjoyed at the restaurant. The atmosphere is lively and fun, the more so the later it gets.

This just in: Arroyo has opened an American chophouse in Los Feliz called The Hillmont--pitched to the same sort of crowd, with steaks, chops and other comfort food at moderate prices. Cobras & Matadors, 7615 W. Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 932-6178. Dishes, $3 to $13.

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G. Garvin’s/GERRY B. GARVIN

Gerry B. Garvin cooked behind the scenes at places such as Morton’s and the late Kass Bah in West Hollywood before heading to Reign, football player Keyshawn Johnson’s slick Southern restaurant in Beverly Hills. Anything but down-home, Garvin’s renditions of fried chicken, smothered pork chops and all those delicious Southern sides made quite an impression there.

Now he’s back with his own restaurant on West 3rd Street. Sorry, he’s not doing Southern--except for some sneaky “too tender” baby back ribs he serves as an appetizer, of all things. He’d like to do more, but not without a real pit. Nevertheless, this small, sleekly tailored restaurant has become a late-night music industry hangout, where the soundtrack on any given night can veer from Mary J. Blige to Alicia Keys.

But the real draw is his intelligent California cuisine--tequila shrimp, golden crab cakes, artful salads. Come to this savvy neighborhood spot for a good steak, an oven-roasted chicken or a trio of delicious lamb chops. It’s all good. But where’s my Southern fried chicken? G. Garvin’s, 8420 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles; (323) 655-3888. Entrees, $21 to $32.

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Alex/ALEX SCRIMGEOUR

It takes self-confidence for a young chef to move into the late Citrus on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles--where Michel Richard once dazzled with his startlingly inventive California-French cuisine.

For almost a year that roomy site just sat there, empty, waiting for someone to ask it to dance.

Enter young Brit Alex Scrimgeour, who last cooked at Saddle Peak Lodge in Malibu Canyon, in search of a more formal setting for his contemporary European cuisine. Presto chango: leather club chairs in the bar, dark wood beams overhead and an Arts and Crafts-inspired decor have swept away the memory of Citrus’ whitewashed room and white market umbrellas. With a prix fixe menu that marches through four courses (with lots of choices), the young Cordon Bleu-trained chef is betting on fine dining to make a comeback in L.A.

While not everything works all the time, you have to admire Scrimgeour’s chutzpah and the breadth of his menu at Alex, where you can find wood-grilled pigeon with chanterelles, grilled langoustine with anchovy butter, coriander-crusted skate wing or Colorado rack of lamb. Alex, 6703 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 933-5233. Entrees, $32. Four-course prix fixe menu, $60.

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Max/ANDRE GUERRERO

Fresh from Linq and a trendy scene where nobody paid much attention to the food, Andre Guerrero is happily cooking in his own place. After 24 years behind the stoves, it’s about time. Lucky enough to nab the former JoeJoe’s space in Sherman Oaks, he named his restaurant Max, after his son. He took that boxy storefront and, with a few clever changes, turned it into something smart and inviting.

“I like the neighborhood,” Guerrero will tell anybody asking. And from the first few weeks of business, it’s clear the neighborhood likes him. Max is thronged.

Guerrero’s cooking is fusion all the way, a style he introduced at Duet in Glendale when he was chef there years ago, and some of his old customers have followed him here. He’s Filipino, so he couldn’t resist putting on the menu lumpia (shrimp and pork spring rolls) and grilled “hawker’s chicken,” skewers of chicken breast with a jolt of green papaya relish. There’s an intricately spiced Thai lemon grass coconut soup, miniature ahi tuna towers with a thatch of nori seaweed, and an intense mushroom risotto with a French duck confit. He still makes a mean New York pepper steak entirely crusted with cracked peppercorns. In short, Max has something for everyone, which may be why it looks as if the entire Valley has dropped in for dinner. Max, 13355 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; (818) 784-2915. Entrees, $15 to $24.