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Your next pop-up restaurant: Bloody Bill’s at Libertine. Plus, William Annesley to open Fatty’s Cajun honky-tonk

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‘Everything I hunt, I cook nose-to-tail, and I butcher everything myself,’ British chef William Annesley proudly declares. Fitting for an avid hunter and cook who has cheerily branded himself as ‘Bloody Bill.’ Annesley has worked as a private chef for Gwen Stefani and Quentin Tarantino and spent three years running Pamplona Tapas Bar in Lafayette, La., but he’s probably best known in Los Angeles for Tangier and Oasis. That may change if his pop-up restaurant and tentative reality show succeed.

The pop-up, named (what else?) Bloody Bill’s, launches at West Hollywood nightclub Libertine on Dec. 17, takes a month-long hiatus and then returns for a six-week stint every Thursday beginning Jan. 14. Annesley’s keeping the menu very free-form and market-based, but all of the dishes will be united by one thing: spice.(Twitter: @bloodybills)

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‘I think spice is underused in this country,’ Annesley says. ‘Spice has made empires rise and fall. It is the reason why cuisine is cuisine and why it has moved and changed and evolved. And I think spice has been drastically overlooked in many restaurants other than in Thai and Indian restaurants.’

The global tapas menu at Bloody Bill’s might include morcilla with quail eggs, barbecued ribs, bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese and tandoori drumsticks with curry fries. But once the food runs out, that’s it until the next week. Michael Della Femina will run the front of the house, while butler/bartender ‘Rotten Jeeves’ will mix and pour libations like the Haamonii Shochu Ginger Cosmo and the Apache Prickly Pear Lemonade. For Annesley, the pop-up restaurant is more than a budding trend, it’s a way to keep busy while trying to set up a reality show.

Working with Incubator TV, the people who helped bring Gordon Ramsay to American television, Annesley says he’s close to signing a deal with a network for a Bloody Bill reality show. He offers few details about the show except to say that it will involve him, his wife Karina and Jeeves exploring ‘more extreme adventures in the culinary world.’

Inspired by his time in Louisiana, Annesley hopes to launch a bona fide ‘Cajun/Creole honky-tonk barbecue’ in the fourth quarter of 2010. He’s currently looking for locations, but has already been stymied by liquor licensing problems that nixed a potential Mid-City West location. ‘We’ve been looking at various locations but haven’t committed,’ Annesley says. ‘Maybe somewhere on the Hollywood side. [The concept] lends itself to Hollywood or Silver Lake.’ Let’s just hope no one confuses this Fatty’s with vegetarian diner Fatty’s.

Bloody Bill’s at Libertine: 8210 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Reservations: (646) 345-5287 or dellafeminahospitality@gmail.com.

--Elina Shatkin

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