A table topper to floor you

ENDIVES, stand up and be counted!

That seems to be the idea at Jer-ne, the restaurant at Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey, where a Belgian endive in a vase graces every table.

It’s quite the cunning display, sort of a science lesson at the dinner table. Best of all, it answers the question that no doubt plagues every food lover: What does an endive root look like, anyway?

Here it’s skewered through and suspended over a square vase, so the root sits in water and the gracefully pointed furl of leaves stands up like a flower. Some tables have pale green ones; others have reddish-violet ones.

They make lovely conversation pieces, evoking, inevitably, trips down memory lane that lead back to an avocado pit suspended by toothpicks over a glass, or a potato suspended likewise, sprouting all over.

Whom do we have to thank for the table art? Troy Thompson, who up until last week was executive chef at the hotel.

“We always had something related to food on our tabletops,” he explained by phone from Chicago, where he was attending the National Kitchen and Bath Assn. Exposition. “Before we had little micro-herbs that were living, inside little rock vases. The person I used to get the rock vases from found religion and didn’t do them anymore.”

Eventually, he had very few left, and he had to come up with something to replace them.

He found it at a food show in L.A. “We went by the Belgian endive guy,” he said, “and he had all these big rooted Belgian endives. I asked him how long would they last and what would they do.”

They last, as it turns out, five or six weeks, sometimes longer.

Best of all from a restaurateur’s point of view, they save the hotel a fortune.

“In a normal restaurant,” Thompson said, “you could probably pay $3,000 a month for arrangements on your tables. A case of Belgian endives is like $25. We probably buy three or four [cases] a month.”

Thompson, 43, opened Jer-ne for the Ritz-Carlton in 2001. He said he’s ready to start thinking about opening his own restaurant. With that end in mind, he said, he’s set to be chef at David Burke Las Vegas, with a planned August opening at the Venetian. Then he plans to open a restaurant in L.A., backed by Burke.

In the meantime, Dakota Weiss has taken Thompson’s place as chef at Jer-ne.

Leslie Brenner

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Small bites

* Tim Goodell put to rest the rumor that his Melrose Avenue new American restaurant Meson G is going to become a Red Pearl Kitchen, calling it “completely false.” (The original Red Pearl Kitchen, operated by Goodell and his wife, Liza, is in Huntington Beach, and there is another newer one in San Diego.) The L.A. area is slated to get two of its very own Red Pearls, in Pasadena and Burbank. But those venues most likely won’t open until next year.

Meson G, 6703 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 525-1415.

* Three on Fourth is slated to open the week of May 3 in the old Rocca space in Santa Monica. The “Three” stands for the trio of alcoholic beverages the restaurant will be offering -- beer, wine and sake -- and the three menus that will be offered to complement, or contrast with, each. The cuisine is global, with an emphasis on Japanese and French fare such as salmon-skin salad and steak frites.

Three on Fourth, 1432 A 4th St., Santa Monica, (310) 395-6765.

* Solare, the Italian restaurant that opened last fall in the space formerly occupied by Em Bistro, has closed.

* Chef James Boyce of Studio in Laguna Beach has created several citrus-themed “flights,” really themed menus with cocktails, each priced at $40 and available at the bar. The tangerine flight, for instance, includes a Murcott tangerine margarita, a Kishu tangerine poached capon breast with spicy greens and to finish, whole poached Kishu tangerines with passion-fruit syrup and peanut brittle.

Studio, 30801 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, (949) 715-6420.

-- Leslee Komaiko