The latest black plate special

At Le Dome in West Hollywood, steak tartare is served on a teardrop-shaped dish. Italian salad is arranged in a square blue glass bowl. The pan-roasted Maine lobster arrives on a round, charcoal gray slab, and the Italian sea bass sits on a plate resembling a fish. So if a table of four sits down and each person orders a different appetizer and entree, they might very well find themselves eating from eight different plates.

The plain old round white plate has long been on the way out, especially at high-end eateries. Now some chefs are going plate wild, combining different lines, different colors and different shapes, sometimes even inventing plates of their own. Food on a tile, anyone?

“It’s culinary arts. I’m an artist. I get a lot of compliments and conversation about it,” says Le Dome chef Sam Marvin, who uses about 30 different plates.

Chef Robert Gadsby of downtown’s Noe restaurant claims to have more than 100 different plates and serving vessels at his disposal, including square glass tiles he uses for the amuse bouche and rectangular wood blocks for the cheese.

In part, the profusion of interestingly shaped and colored plates is simply a matter of availability. “I’m just amazed with what the companies are putting out these days,” says Bill Bracken, chef at the Belvedere in the Peninsula Beverly Hills. “Ten years ago, we had nothing to choose from.”

“We experiment,” says David Myers of Sona, whose plate resources include two different lines from Izabel Lam, several Rosenthal designs, and wood and glass plates from Japan. It’s not all about the customers. Ultimately, says Myers, “We do it for ourselves. We would get really bored with one canvas.”

-- Leslee Komaiko

Cooking with art

The long-awaited English translation of the cookbook from El Bulli, Spain’s groundbreaking restaurant, has arrived. The book, “El Bulli 1998-2002” by Ferran Adria, Juli Soler and Albert Adria (El Bulli Books), includes nearly 500 pages of color photographs as well as a CD-ROM of recipes. It’s not cheap: $200 at Cook’s Library in West Hollywood and $225 at La Sanctuaire in Santa Monica. It’s also available from gourmandbooks.com for $206.11, including shipping.

The original $175 Spanish version sold more than 16,000 copies internationally. “The thing is a revelation,” says Chicago chef Charlie Trotter. “There is nothing like it. It is a truly stunning work of art.”

-- Russ Parsons

Small bites

* Xiomara Ardolina just opened Xiomara on Melrose. The Nuevo Latino menu is nearly identical to the one served at Xiomara in Pasadena, with some additions. The restaurant is open for dinner nightly, for lunch on weekdays, and for brunch on weekends.

Xiomara on Melrose, 6101 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 461-0601.

* Kung Pao Kitty opened in November in Hollywood. Set designer Paul Oberman is the man behind it -- no wonder the place is so theatrical, with its New York loft meets Chinese opium den decor. Chef Todd Butler turns out an array of pan-Asian favorites.

Kung Pao Kitty, 6445 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 465-0110.

* The former sous-chef at Water Grill, Collin Crannell, takes the helm this week at Oceanfront in Hotel Casa del Mar. “The dining room is my style of cooking: semi-rustic and simple,” says Crannell.

Oceanfront, 1910 Ocean Way, Santa Monica, (310) 581-7714.