Steven Arroyo revamps, renames Bicentennial 13

Steven Arroyo is giving the Cobras & Matadors-adjacent wine shop Bicentennial 13 a new look and a new name.  Beginning next month, the tapas impressario will debut his latest concept: an upscale grab 'n' go shop dubbed Potato Chips.

Potato Chips will serve up salads, sandwiches and more to-go items in addition to carefully selected wines and beers.  Arroyo told us over the weekend that he hopes to have the small shop open by the end of November.  Design changes are still being worked out, but the centerpiece of Bicentennial's new look will be a massive vintage sign that Arroyo just bought, which spells out "Potato Chips" in cursive script. (The sign is currently sitting on the floor of the cozy shop.)

Potato Chips, 7613 Beverly Blvd., (323) 931-4995.

-- Charlie Amter 

Photo of Steven Arroyo by Curtis Kulig

Cooking Light Supper Club

A decade ago, a Cooking Light reader used the magazine’s online bulletin board to find like-minded souls to join her in a supper club. Cooking Light knew a good thing when it saw one: It featured Amy Fong’s club in the magazine and started encouraging other readers to form clubs.

Now the magazine has a spot on its website (cookinglight.com, click on community) with suggestions and tips for clubs, and marketing director Hallett Ruzic says there are more than 100 clubs.

(At right, Cooking Light's executive chef Billy Strynkowski demonstrates.)

One magazine reader, Barbara Tiedemann of El Segundo, caught the bug a few years back and enlisted some friends and relatives. Their dinners have a theme, and each couple contributes a dish. Sometimes the host requests a specific dish, sometimes just a course. The members range in age from 30s to 60s, and their cooking experience is equally varied.

“This way we are all sharing and learning,” she said.

I went to a Cooking Light Supper Club dinner the other night at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica -- meant to encourage more supper clubs, perhaps forging groups with the people seated nearby. That didn’t quite work for me -– I live in L.A., and my tablemates lived in Newport Beach and Riverside County.

But everyone seemed to be having a great time -– the wine flowed freely, and the food was good. People cheered Cooking Light’s amiable executive chef, Billy Strynkowski, who cooked on a stage and whose efforts were shown on an adjacent big screen.

Health of economy is measured in grilled cheese

When the going gets tough the hungry eat at home. The Times reported today that as fears of a global recession grow and stocks continue their turbulent ride, restaurants are feeling the pinch. Particularly hard-hit are chains, which count on repeat visits from hard-working families for their financial health. Read the full story here.

That places like the Cheesecake Factory and Islands are suffering makes me wonder how pricey gourmet restaurants and bars run by star chefs are faring. At what point do the well off begin to pinch their pennies? If a tellingly blithe press release from downtown's ritzy Edison bar holds a partial answer to that complicated question, it would appear that the answer is not just yet.

"Edison Answers the call for your Bail Out and 401 K," reads the subject line for the release. The text continues cheekily (and with erratic -- dare we say frantic -- use of capital letters and punctuation), "Financial markets in crisis; $700 Billion bailout of Wall Street; Global Financial Meltdown! The Edison responds to the crisis with a meltdown of its own. Grilled Cheese Melts, tomato soup and Depression Era cocktails at Depression Era prices.

"The Edison brings much needed respite to those in need. In an effort to restore confidence in the community and its businesses, The Edison introduces the Soup Kitchen, Friday 5-7 PM: to remind everyone to maintain perspective through this financial crisis and to support those truly in need."

Reading that, one is left to wonder who is in need. Do the denizens of downtown L.A. need free soup and sandwiches to offset the losses of their 401(k)s? The release goes on to say that 25% of the night's net profits will go to local food banks and charities, which explains who really is in need. But if that's the case, then maybe Depression Era cocktail prices aren't really the way to go. What's 25% of 30 cents? If you really want to help we suggest you buy your drinks at full price and leave a donation at the door. 

The Edison, 108 W. 2nd St., (213) 613-0000.

--Jessica Gelt

Photo of grilled cheese by Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

French Laundry cooked!

The great French Laundry experiment is over. Carol has cooked Keller. No, not the restaurant, of course. Last I heard you still have to play phone roulette exactly two months to the day before you want to eat there in hopes of snagging one of the 80 or 90 available seats. What I’m talking about is blogger Carol Blymire’s great experiment in cooking every dish from "The French Laundry Cookbook."

As anyone who has even glanced at the book knows, that’s an amazing achievement, and Blymire’s blog French Laundry at Home has captured every step of the way with wit and zeal. See Carol make veal stock; see Carol saw a pig’s head in half (see Carol explain at her neighborhood hardware store what exactly she needs a hacksaw for).

The blog is great reading. Blymire makes a suitably spunky heroine with just enough of a head-in-the-clouds/feet-on-the-ground duality to keep you on her side through even her most obsessive stages. And of these there are many. She’s clearly got something to prove with all of this cooking. One of the blog’s charms is that these culinary experiments are as much about self-actualization as they are about cooking. There’s more than a bit of Everest climbing involved. Carol cooks crazy stuff to prove to herself that she can.

There are also lessons learned along the way and selves improved. And, as almost inevitably seems to happen to those who get to know Thomas Keller (even in print), there is Kool-Aid drunk. (At this point, the standard ethical rider is inserted: Keller and coauthor Michael Ruhlman wrote a column for this paper for a couple of years that I edited and I still consider them both good friends. I, too, have tasted the magical elixir.)

But as much as I enjoyed the blog, on another level, a couple of times it gave me pause.

From dishwasher to top chef

I have eaten at far more taco trucks and pupuserias than I care to admit. So when a colleague suggested that I check out some of L.A.'s finest restaurants for a possible story (I'm an immigration reporter), it sounded pretty good to me.

It would be the ultimate immigrant success story: dishwashers who work their way up the restaurant ladder and become bosses in the kitchen. Once I got on the phone, finding the story was easy -- at sushi joints, French bistros, Asian-fusion restaurants.

At one of the spots, Pane e Vino on Beverly Boulevard, I watched executive chef Victor Caro run the kitchen at the end of the lunch rush. Caro's motto is: Never forget where you came from. So when he had a break, he stopped to help out with the dishes. At another, Pacific Grille downtown, I watched executive chef Manny Diaz prepare miso black cod with udon noodles, crab spring rolls with smoked mozzarella and saffron shrimp risotto. And of course, since it was lunch time, I just had to taste some of Diaz's creations. Maybe it's time to stop writing about immigration and start writing about food.

Click here to read the full story.

-- Anna Gorman

Video of Manny Diaz by Tim French / Los Angeles Times.

Jared Simons and the gastroclub

I caught up with 30-year-old chef Jared Simons last night in his kitchen whites at the trendy new Hollywood club Bardot. In late September, Simons closed his well-liked restaurant Violet, which he opened in 2004, to helm Bardot's kitchen. Having barely squeaked past a line and an intimidating doorman myself, I asked Simons if he was concerned that his food would no longer be accessible to the general public. Getting into Bardot is not something any old Joe the Plumber can do, not as long as the place remains on speed dial for Hollywood royalty, but Simons said that if people make dinner reservations they'll be able to sample the small plates on his "Promiscuous Dining" menu.

"You've heard of a gastropub," Simons said. "Well I want to create a gastroclub."

If anyone can accomplish the feat of making young, rail-thin party people actually want to be seen eating food while inside a club, maybe Simons can. With his liberal sprinkling of tattoos, choppy black hair and rock 'n' roll good looks, Simons fits the super-cool nocturnal chef mold. Now it's up to the rest of us to figure out how to look sexy while eating braised beef brisket with white chocolate and shiitake mushrooms.

Bardot, 1737 N. Vine St., Hollywood; (323) 462-1307.

— Jessica Gelt 

Photo credit: Jared Simons' MySpace page

A peek into XIV's wine list

Michael Mina's latest restaurant –- called XIV ("Fourteen"), in case you'd lost count –- amounts to a slight departure from other Mina efforts. Then again, every Mina venture is a slight departure from the last. But how does Mina tweak his wine program for each new locale?

The wine list at XIV is orchestrated by Mina's wine director, Rajat Parr. Parr got his start as a busboy at the recently closed Rubicon Restaurant in San Francisco, where master sommelier Larry Stone once held court, assembling one of the greatest wine lists in the country, as well as training and inspiring close to a dozen of California's most prominent sommeliers and wine professionals –- Parr is a Rubicon alumnus.

Tasked with populating 14 wine lists, Parr operates with a fair amount of leverage, the kind that allows him to travel to Champagne annually to blend a proprietary "Cuvee Michael Mina" in the cellars of the exquisite grower producer Chartogne-Taillet. In many other Mina ventures, Parr has assembled the wine list equivalents of novels –- tomes with a breadth that reminds one of Dickens or Bulgakov. At XIV, however, Parr has composed, for him, a short story.

The list here is surprisingly (relatively) brief –- fewer than 250 wines –- accounting perhaps for the peripatetic attention span of your average Sunset Strip patron. But Parr has covered his bases. He describes it as "200 of my closest friends," which includes artisanal California producers like Steve Beckmen and the Peay family, as well as a selection of wines made by his fellow and former sommeliers (for example, Stone's Sirita Cabernet or Spago somm Kevin O'Connor's Lioco "Michaud" Chardonnay). And Parr isn't afraid to include a few from his own burgeoning label, Parr Selections.

XIV, 8117 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 656-1414.

-– Patrick J. Comiskey

Photo credit: XIV

Notes from the Test Kitchen: Behind the scenes for pasta with kids

OK, so who doesn't like to play with their food?  When we set out to shoot Amy Scattergood's cover story this week, "Homemade pasta, a perfect cooking project for kids," we had some young chefs-in-training who showed us just how much fun making, eating -- and shooting -- pasta can be.

We were lucky a couple weeks ago when Bridgette and her brother Bob happened into the test kitchen; they had the day off from schoool and Mom brought them by. We were prepping dishes to shoot for the pesto and kugel recipes and asked if they'd be interested in helping demonstrate the basic pasta recipe. We didn't have to ask twice -- less than five minutes later they were in the studio, already dusted with flour and ready to go.

In sync with the seasons

I misread the news release months ago and thought Dan Barber, chef of the phenomenal Blue Hill at Stone Barns in the Pocantico Hills of New York was coming out with a cookbook this fall. He isn't (or at least not that I know of).

Instead he's written the introduction to a fine cookbook by British garden guru Sarah Raven called "In Season: Cooking With Vegetables and Fruits." I have a couple of her excellent gardening books in my library — "The Great Vegetable Plot: Delicious Varieties to Grow and Eat" and "Cutting Garden: Growing and Arranging Garden Flowers." And her cooking style is as easy as her way with flower and vegetable gardens.

This is a book you'll want to use for inspiration and low-stress entertaining. Thumbing through, I see lots of recipes I'd like to make: Sally Clarke's young carrots with freshly shelled peas and tarragon leaves; cranberry bean hummus with anchovies, garlic, yogurt, lemon and olive oil. Or pappardelle with walnuts and cream.

Le Meurice/Hotel Bel-Air culinary exchange: Chef Yannick Alléno comes to Los Angeles

Crispy hen egg yolks with "golden osetra" caviar, foie gras poached with Chambertin wine, Bresse chicken with white truffle served four ways (including chicken leg quenelles in consommé).

Is this Paris, or am I just dreaming?

It's better than either. You don't have to go all the way to the City of Lights for a taste of Yannick Alléno's menu at three-star Le Meurice. In a culinary Relais Gourmand exchange program, Alléno will be cooking at the Hotel Bel-Air restaurant next month. Seatings are available Nov. 10 to 12.

Other menu items include jelly of acidulated green apple with vervain; preserved wild salmon from "Adour" served pink with melted cabbage with orange peels and cleared stock flavored with juniper berries; and melted chocolate and lemon cake with gold leaf. Reservations are required. The cost is $150 per person, far less expensive than a trip to Paris.

Hotel Bel-Air, 701 Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles, (310) 472-5234. 

-- Betty Hallock

Photo of Yannick Alléno. Credit: Le Meurice