 Ferran Adria’s Los Angeles tour began Monday night with a cocktail party and Sam Nazarian’s little (let’s called it “intimate”) S Bar near the corner of Hollywood and Vine was packed with foodies, night-lifers and a smattering of hometown chefs out to greet the big man. Jose Andres, who this month is opening Bazaar in Beverly Hills with Nazarian, co-hosted in a bright red baseball cap. Suzanne Goin was there, nine months pregnant and looking ready to be done with it (as is her husband David Lentz). Alain Giraud was there as well and I ran into Nancy Silverton on her way out, leaving a little early to tend to something urgent.
But the big star of the night, at least for me, was Laker forward Pau Gasol. Look, I can talk to chefs any day, but a seven-footer with a sweet set shot is another matter.
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Romenesko points to an article by Ken Edelstein at Creative Loafing -- "AJC dining critic flouts a conflict of interest." It's about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution restaurant critic Meridith Ford Goldman hiring local chefs (whom she had regularly written about) for her wedding party. Edelstein writes: The situation brings up so many conflict-of-interest issues that it’s hard to imagine how they could have been overlooked by Goldman or, just as importantly, by her editors.
Edelstein says he "practically choked on [his] chicken livers when the daily ran Goldman's article gushing about the chefs at her reception."
-- Betty Hallock
 Chef Josef Centeno left Lot 1 in Echo Park in July, with the aim of opening his own place, but meanwhile, he has spent the last month consulting at Bar Celona in Pasadena. The menu, which was more "Old Town" than truly Spanish-inspired, has received an overhaul.
Now there are Catalan-inflected dishes such as charred Padrón peppers with Spanish sea salt and a version of pan con tomate (toasted bread rubbed with garlic and tomato, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt). Here the pan con tomate is served with salbitxada sauce -- this one with hazelnuts, baby pear tomatoes, sherry vinegar, lemon juice and zest, and parsley.
"Spanish cuisine has been a fundmanetal part of my cooking," says Centeno, who still is planning to open his own restaurant. "But these are a modern take on classic dishes with really fresh ingredients."
Other tapas are crispy eggplant with honey and spiced yogurt; whipped salt cod and potatoes (bacalao); tortilla española; pork shoulder conserva; and Spanish flatbreads with basil, mint, Manchego and figs....
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 From L.A. Times blog Babylon & Beyond:
According to a report by the Deutchse Presse Agentur, Germany's news agency, a Lebanese trade union is planning to sue Israel for claiming that the Jewish state has propriety over traditional Arab cuisine such as falafel, tabbouleh and hummus, which Lebanese consider their own.
Read more here.
 Treat Street, the roving bake sale that may turn up on a street near you (most likely if you live in Silver Lake), is back. This Saturday at 10:30 a.m. on Carnation Avenue (Carnation runs between Micheltorena and Maltman avenues; check treatst.blogspot.com for more details). They're calling this one the "Don't Call It a Comeback" bake sale. Past goodies have included madeleines, cherry turnovers, oatmeal cookies, brownies with sprinkles, pralines and Nilla pudding cups.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo credit: Treat Street
 Ferran Adria is coming to Los Angeles and he'll be signing books at Cook's Library. For a certain group of people (and you know who you are), that's all that needs to be said. It's like finding out Beck is playing Cafe Largo. Adria may not be the best chef in the world or run the best restaurant in the world, as he claims in the subtitle of his new cookbook "A Day at El Bulli", but he is almost certainly the most-talked about. And if you're over by the Beverly Center on Oct. 14 between 3:30 and 5 p.m., you can meet him in person.
Working with wild creativity out of a tiny restaurant on an isolated stretch of the Spanish coast, Adria has led the way for the hyper-modern school of cuisine sometimes known as molecular gastronomy. In the past, his cookbooks have been lavish crosses between lab manual and artist's catalogue, documenting both technique and philosophy. And they've been hugely expensive, too -- selling for better than $200.
His new book, published by the British art house Phaidon, is selling for only $50 ($32.97 on Amazon!). But if any corners were cut in its production, it's hard to see where. (more after jump)
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 We heard the rumors and now Eater L.A. has it that Alex Eusebio, the young, down-to-earth Dominican chef from 15 in Echo Park is a contestant on Top Chef New York.
There are two other L.A.-area chefs on the show--former Enoteca Drago chef Stefan Richter and Fabio Viviani of Moorpark's Cafe Firenze--but I'm the most excited about Eusebio, whom I interviewed for a story about 15 back in April. At the time he was 33 and getting ready to marry his long-time sweetheart. He talked a lot about keeping his food accessible and giving back to the neighborhood and he slaved behind the stove six days a week without complaint. I have a hunch that his winning smile, easy manner and dreamy dimples will win over the television audience and I'm willing to predict here and now that he makes it into the top three.
No matter what happens, now I get why 15 put a valet out front not too long ago.
--Jessica Gelt
(An earlier version of this post misspelled Moorpark as Moorepark.)
Photo of Alex Eusebio in the kitchen at 15 by Genaro Molina / The Los Angeles Times
 Marco Pierre White (aka "the godfather of rock-star chefs," "enfant terrible of the British restaurant scene," etc.) retired from the kitchen in 1999 but has recently embarked on a television career; last year, he was head chef on the third season of the British "Hell's Kitchen" series. It seems he's on a mission to solidify his status as "the first celebrity chef."
We caught up with him for a Q&A during his visit to L.A. this week. He's promoting his coming TV show, an American version of "The Chopping Block," produced for NBC by Granada America (which also brought us "Hell's Kitchen"), in which couples compete for a shot at having their own Manhattan restaurant. The show is expected to air sometime next year.
The chef notorious for applying the "10-second throttle" to his cooks (according to his 2007 memoir "The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef") has opened 30 restaurants and now has his sights set on the U.S.
With stocks plunging and the economy in crisis here, what advice do you have for anyone trying to open a restaurant now?...
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 If you thought the lines at Philippe the Original were bad already, wait until Monday, Oct. 6, which marks the historic restaurant's 100-year anniversary. On that day, three generations of the Binder family (who have owned Philippe's with two other families since 1927) will be on hand to help sell the restaurant's heart-stopping roast beef French dip sandwiches for a dime. That was the price the meaty, juicy sandwiches were sold for when they first appeared on the menu in 1918. The price of coffee, which normally sells for a dime, will be slashed in half to a nickel.
If the Dow continues its downward spiral and the House remains deadlocked on what to do about the financial crisis, the monstrous line that will surely snake around the block Monday may resemble a bread line more than a party. But no matter, those are prices to wait for these days. And Philippe's French dip sandwich, with liberal amounts of signature hot mustard, is worthy of dedicated, solemn, slow-line celebration, which is just what you'll find Monday, so make sure to bring some sort of cane chair. And please, be gentle on the restrooms -- which with an estimated 2,200 customers daily and up to 4,000 on weekends are on the edge already.
Philippe the Original, 1001 Alameda St., L.A. (213) 628-3781.
-- Jessica Gelt
Photo of the counter at Philippe the Original by Jay Clendenin for the Los Angeles Times
Web Scout covers the backlash over Goop.com (where Gwyneth Paltrow seems to be positioning herself as a sort of Martha Stewart):  Gwyneth Paltrow's new lifestyle/advice website, Goop.com, went up yesterday in preview form, but the backlash is already well underway. The site will be a collection of recommendations and musings from Gwyneth herself about things that make her life special.... but the road ahead looks bumpy for this little operation! It's not just that no one wants to take life direction from the girl who has it all -- though that's a powerful thread in the criticism of the site. There are also some more basic technical problems on display, starting with the layout of the two-page site. It's not clear why she bothered to put it up with so little content on it. It feels like something that won an award for Web design in 1998.
When you click on the fork and knife icon, you get an essay about how she loves "to travel, to cook, to eat, to take care of my body and mind, to work hard...," etc.
Photo by Luca Bruno/Associated Press
 Sometimes when cookbook authors are out promoting their new books, they’ll run into each other and have dinner. Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller are taking that several steps further. Achatz, named chef of the year for the United States by the James Beard Foundation this year for his work at Chicago’s Alinea, worked for Keller for several years at the French Laundry and credits him as a career-changing mentor. So when the two learned that Achatz’s “Alinea” cookbook was going to be published at the same time as Keller’s new “Under Pressure,” the two cooked up a plan to host a series of three dinners rotating among Alinea, the French Laundry and Keller’s New York City restaurant Per Se.
Of course, Achatz and Keller being who they are, these aren’t going to be your rote “here’s a couple of recipes from my book” menus. Instead, they’ll be 20-dish blowouts with each chef preparing half the menu in alternating courses. The dinners will be held at Per Se on Nov. 11, at Alinea on Dec. 2 and at the French Laundry, Dec. 9. Each meal will be limited to the first 65 people who sign up.
And as you might expect, Achatz and Keller being who they are, the meals won’t come cheap. The dinners will run $1,500 per person. But hey, that includes matching wine pairings for each course and signed copies of both books!
For more information, contact the restaurants: Per Se (212) 823-9450; Alinea (312) 867-0110 and the French Laundry (707) 754-4175.
--By Russ Parsons
Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller at the French Laundry's 10th anniversary celebration (Photo from the French Laundry).
 Will Shamlian and Michael Leko's Library Bar in downtown L.A. is about to open a kitchen. Manager Carlos Perez says that a menu is currently in the works and that the kitchen will most likely be up and running in a couple of weeks.
"We've been saying 'a couple of weeks' for about a month now,' " Perez jokes. "That's got nothing to do with us though, it's all about construction and permits."
According to Perez, there will be about a dozen menu items, including specialty burgers and fries. Beyond that he says the food will not resemble typical bar food. "There won't be buffalo wings or shrimp poppers or anything like that," he says, adding that the chef is a friend of the owner and will be creating similar menus for Shamlian's Sapphire bar in Studio City and for a new bar that the group is planning to open in Manhattan Beach.
-- Jessica Gelt
Photo: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times
 White truffles have landed on the menu at Craft in Century City, and people just can't fathom it. White truffles in August? "Preposterous," says one naysayer. "Nothing until October at best."
Better believe it, says Craft chef Matt Accarrino. He says it's the earliest he's gotten them. "They are coming from Tuscany [not Alba], I'm told.... very fragrant." On the menu, there's Fontina and mushroom raviolo with an egg yolk and white truffle; Yukon potato pierogi with white truffle, Gruyere and cabbage; scrambled duck eggs with white truffle brioche buns. "I even made a truffle icing," Accarrino says.
Last year, a more-than-3-pound white truffle (what Brillat-Savarin called "the diamond of the kitchen") was dug up in Tuscany in November, the world's record. Macao casino owner Stanley Ho shelled out $330,000 for it.
By the way, because of repairs being made to its floors, Craft will be closed beginning Saturday, Aug. 30, and will reopen for dinner at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5. Reservation lines will remain open, except for Sunday, Aug. 31, and Monday, Sept. 1, for the Labor Day holiday.
Craft, 10100 Constellation Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 279-4180.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo of white truffles in Italy from the Associated Press
 Rustic Canyon Wine Bar & Seasonal Kitchen plans to open a bakery-cafe and retail space next spring about two blocks down the street from its restaurant, near the soon-to-open Santa Monica Seafood.
Owner Josh Loeb says Rustic pastry chef Zoe Nathan (whose star has been rising these days) "will be running the whole thing as far as food goes." Loeb isn't able to disclose the exact address yet because there's still a tenant in the space, but he says he's already signed the lease.
The new cafe, which is not yet named ("We've been bouncing names back and forth," says Loeb), will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and will serve breakfast, lunch and take-out dinner. Expect farmers market salads and sandwiches along with pastries and fresh-baked bread from an on-site bread oven. There will also be gourmet retail items for sale in the cafe's marketplace.
Explaining the expansion, Loeb says, "The kitchen at Rustic is so small, we just can't do everything we'd like to do in it."
— Jessica Gelt
Photo by Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times
 Los Angeles chef about town Jet Tila has been tapped to open a to-be-named pan-Asian restaurant at casino mogul Steve Wynn's new Wynn-adjacent Encore resort in Las Vegas.
Tila, whose family owns L.A.'s Bangkok Market, has been teaching cooking classes -- at the New School of Cooking in Culver City and Sur La Table, among other venues -- and consulting for Bon Appetit Management Co. Tila also has contributed to the Los Angeles Times and has appeared regularly on KCRW's "Good Food."
"America's already very accustomed to Chinese and Japanese food, so it's time to bring in bolder flavors," Tila says. "Indian flavors, Singaporean flavors, and of course, Thai –- I think Thai has been misrepresented. I'm trying to bring it back to what it's supposed to be."
The nearly 100-seat restaurant also will serve sushi and dim sum. Asian restaurants at Wynn include Okada (Japanese), Michelin-starred Wing Lei (Chinese) and Asian bistro Red 8.
Encore is expected to open early next year. Other restaurants include Botero Steak and Switch, and as reported by Eater LA, Patina chef Theo Schoenegger also will be opening a restaurant.
-- Betty Hallock
Photo: chefjet.com
"Ask not for whom the Napkin of Shame comes. Sooner or later, it will come for you."
I don't know how this Nov. 20 item by Frank Bruni on the New York Times' Diner's Journal blog got by me (especially because it was blogged to death by other food bloggers), but once I saw it, I was riveted in the way only authorial pride can rivet. "I suppose I knew it already," Bruni wrote, "but a recent visit to the restaurant Fiamma in SoHo hammered home this lesson: Ask not for whom the Napkin of Shame comes. Sooner or later, it will come for you.
"What in the world am I talking about?" Bruni continued. "What’s up with this upper case Napkin and why is it a badge of uppercase Shame? Excellent questions, with answers that have nothing to do with keyboard problems.The Napkin of Shame, as I have come to think of it, is part of a fancy-restaurant ritual I’ve never made peace with. The Napkin of Shame is what a server carries to a table on which a section of the cloth has been splashed with sauce or speckled with wine. A server unfurls the Napkin of Shame and stretches it over the soiled terrain, a bit of patchwork that makes the table look clean again."
Very nicely said, Mr. Bruni. But that's my Napkin of Shame. At least I wrote about it, upper case and all, in my 1999 book "American Appetite." OK, so the book is out of print, so it won't be so easy for you to check it out. Touché. Anyway, it's right there on page 266. I included it as part of an anecdote about my husband being made to borrow a restaurant tie at Bouley in New York. "And there's nothing more embarrassing," I concluded, "than a restaurant tie, unless it's receiving the Napkin of Shame." (Note the use of upper case.) Then there's a footnote, explaining what it is.
Yes, I know that ideas are out there in the collective unconscious, and that the same idea can occur to dozens of people at once. That's why I expected that if I Googled the phrase, I'd get a grillion hits. But I didn't -- I just got 423, and almost all of them referred to Bruni's item. (One leads to a blog called Ashkeling, on which an undated entry recounts a visit to El Bulli in which the Napkin of Shame is called upon to cover up some kind of basil foam incident. Another refers to an Amazon reader review of my book -- see! I'm not making it up.) I'm not suggesting Mr. Bruni ever read my book -- hardly anyone did, or it wouldn't be out of print! But you have to admit, that's some coincidence.
It's probably my own fault, because here's a confession: It's my mom who first conjured the phrase, years before "American Appetite" was published. Yes, Mom, I should have attributed it to you. As penance, next time I'm in a white-tablecloth restaurant, I'll purposely spill my wine and suffer the Napkin of Shame as penance. Until then, I think it belongs to Frank Bruni.
-- Leslie Brenner
 Though it's been some years since I've cared how many stars Michelin bestows in France and elsewhere, I must confess that somehow, in the last few days, I got swept up in the buzz about the publication of the first Michelin guide for L.A. There was all the commotion over the results being leaked, and who got how many stars, and I don't know, on Friday, when Food's assistant editor Betty Hallock found her way onto the unpublished list on the Michelin website, it suddenly seemed exciting.
Tonight, much of L.A.'s food press is celebrating the publication at a party at Les Deux, but I took home my copy of the Michelin Guide Los Angeles 2008 and skimmed it over bad pizza and a glass of red.
I was stunned at what I read. Beyond the stars and the fourchettes, there are the descriptions themselves. The Foundry's Eric Greenspan, I find, "learned from El Bulli disciplines in Spain." (What does that mean?) At Chameau, you can "end your Moroccan respite with a Spanish Muscatel." At Water Grill, diners "can drop anchor" and "the chef's busy brigade creates swells of satisfaction." The writing makes the Zagat guide look like "Ulysses."
Who could write such stuff, and where are their editors? Meanwhile, if the "anonymous inspectors" who bestowed the stars had reasons for anointing some chefs and dissing others, it's hard to understand them. Unlike in the European guides, the L.A.-edition entries read like little puff pieces, and one doesn't have the sense that the writers know much at all about food. At Wilshire, "there's no mistaking the components of diver scallops seared in clarified butter and served with creamy roasted fingerling and spicy chorizo." The chef there, we're told, is Warren Schwartz. (Don't tell Chris Blobaum!) Tre Venezie in Pasadena gets a star. Why? "Dishes here are not based on thick tomato sauces, olive oil and basil as they are elsewhere." Yup, we're getting pretty fed up with them thick tomato sauces too.
And Asian cooking? Nope, they don't get it.
Japanese food gets the most respect, but little understanding. Here's an excerpt from the listing for Mori Sushi in West L.A., which gets one star: "This, as chef/owner Morihiro Onodera asserts, is a sushi restaurant, serving only fish and vegetables." At Urasawa, which gets two stars, we're told that "sushi placed atop warm rice mixed with grated wasabi must be eaten within ten seconds." Beyond that, the only dishes mentioned are a carved turnip filled with "a fragrant garlic and ginger shrimp paste" and "cubes of Wagyu beef cooked in smoky-sweet ponzu sauce" that "fall apart on the tongue."
Meanwhile, only four Chinese restaurants -- Empress Pavilion, Mr. Chow, Yang Chow and Yujean Kang's -- are included. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong in the city whose Chinese restaurants arguably rival Hong Kong's. (Triumphal Palace, Elite and Ocean Star apparently aren't serious enough for inclusion.)
As for Thai, Michelin includes Cholada, Saladang Song and Talesai. It's enough to make you cry.
The book is filled with errors (Monte Alban, it tells us, is Spanish for "white mountain"), omissions (if you're going to give Spago two stars, it might be worth mentioning that the chef is Lee Hefter) and weirdnesses (Bar Marmont but not Chateau Marmont).
So, ye chefs who are fretting because you didn't get the stars you feel you deserve, relax. Once L.A.'s food lovers get their hands on the red book in question, it's hard to imagine they'll take it seriously.
Michelin Guide Los Angeles 2008, available in bookstores beginning Wednesday, $14.95.
-- Leslie Brenner
  In the Test Kitchen here at the L.A. Times downtown, we test all the recipes that appear in the Food section, and most of them we also shoot -- in the adjacent photo studio. The shoot for today's cover story by Betty Hallock on plateaux de fruits de mer -- multitiered seafood platters -- was one of the most challenging we've done in a long time. For the cover, we weren't sure whether we'd use a photo of one of the beautiful plateaux showing up in L.A. restaurants lately, such as those at Comme Ça or Water Grill.
But we knew that the seafood we assembled and prepared for our plateaux-to-make-at-home (you can find the recipe in the story at latimes.com) was pretty spectacular-looking, so we were hopeful we'd get a great shot.
It was tricky because we had to cover big platters with crushed ice, lay out all the prepared seafood, style the platters, stack one atop the other, and photograph it before the ice melted. We didn't want to shuck the oysters or clams too long in advance, or they wouldn't look great; ditto the sea urchin, which we wanted to look pristine.
 Although Test Kitchen director Donna Deane had some previous experience wrestling with live sea urchins, neither Betty Hallock nor recipe tester Noelle Carter nor I did, and we were eager to see how it was done. Photographer Carlos Chavez, who did the cover shoot, had plenty of experience with them -- he loves to pick them up to eat at home ("with salsa," he said; "they're amazing).
Noelle, who spent three months in New Orleans, much of it shucking and eating oysters, shucked all the oysters and clams for the photo (then later taught me how -- I'd long been wanting to learn). She had already cooked the lobster, shrimp, crab, periwinkles, cockles and mussels in court bouillon and chilled them, and dressed the mussels, made the sauces, etc. She and Donna split the lobsters and cracked the crab and we arranged it all on the ice, and put it in the fridge.
 Then Donna prepped the sea urchins -- there were three of them waving their quills around gently. Using a knife, then kitchen shears, she cut a circle out of the top of one. It was filled with horrible-looking liquid and other icky stuff -- then Carlos jumped in. He showed us how to pour out the liquid, discard the black parts, and gently pull the sections of roe off the inside of the shell, keeping them intact. I tasted one -- and though I've eaten uni in some of the best restaurants in Japan, this was really something special -- so unbelievably fresh and sweet. Spectacular. It's one of the great treats in life. Donna prepped the prettiest one; we rinsed it out and filled it with crushed ice, and laid the roe on top. We placed it smack in the center of the top tier.
 Then quickly, we brought the two trays into the studio and stacked one on the other, using a stand like you'd see for placing a pizza on a table. Carlos, who had lighted the spot he'd be shooting beforehand -- a beige tablecloth laid on the floor -- started shooting. He could see the shots instantly on his computer, so we started rearranging the plateau a bit, filling in here and there with more oysters, making a pretty sea snail more prominent, moving some of the clams. He shot some more, but the tablecloth showed wrinkles, so we got down on the floor and pulled it tight. And he shot some more. Another touch to the plateau here and there, and more shooting, and what Carlos got was so spectacular we decided to use it for the cover. (Stephen Osman later shot a step-by-step of Donna preparing the urchin; you can find that online, with other step-by-steps, in the story.)
There was nothing left to do -- except eat all that wonderful seafood.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Leslie Brenner (the amateurish ones), Carlos Chavez (the professional one you see last) and Stephen Osman (the professional one of the uni)
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 Well, these dishes look pretty good. But cooking through Alice Waters' new book, "The Art of Simple Cooking," posed a few problems for Russ Parsons, the California Cook. Oh, Russ ... ? What's the deal? That's Alice Waters you're talking about. Join Russ for a live chat today at 1 p.m. at latimes.com, and get it straight from the Parsons' mouth. He'll be happy to explain what snagged him up in the recipes, what he was expecting, why he was disappointed and which Chez Panisse cookbooks he prefers. If you ask him real nice, he might even tell you about some of his favorite Chez Panisse recipes, and talk you through making them.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Carlos Chavez
 Ludovic Lefebvre, the chef last seen at Bastide's last (pre-Walter Manzke) incarnation, is back on the L.A. scene with a series of dinners at Bread Bar beginning Wednesday.
So what is an "eclectic culinary journey"? The way Lefebvre explains it, he fell in love with the bread at Breadbar, so he said to Ali Chalabi, Breadbar's co-owner (with Eric Kayser), "You're not open at night, but why not do something at night? But not a sandwich. You know the concept of sushi, but doing that with bread." For example? "I love guacamole," says Lefebvre. "I'm going to do a broccoli guacamole. And I found these beautiful multicolored carrots, and I do a simple carrot rapé." (That's grated carrot salad.)
 A tapas-type menu is the way Kristine Lefebvre, Ludo's wife and manager (and attorney by day) puts it. "But it's unlike your typical tapas menu," she says. "Every dish is designed to inspire the artist in all of us, so you create your own meal. Ludo will provide suggestions about what to put together. Finding the best products is something Ludo's always been known for. All of the products are going to be attached to a certain farmer or a certain producer. The menu will change almost daily, based on whichever farmer he's working with that week."
The evenings will be co-sponsored by the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Lefebvre says he'll be there (at the West 3rd Street location) for every dinner, and that Cheese Store owner Norbert Wabnig will be there for many evenings too.
And Lefebvre has a restaurant in the works. "I'm coming back slowly," he says. He's got his eye on a location; he and Kristine are in the process of negotiating a deal for it. "It'll be the beginning of next year," says Kristine.
And the concept? "I want to do a bistro," says Lefebvre, "but around the world, not just French food. I want to do a pot au feu, but with a Thai flavor. Or a miso soup with foie gras. I've cooked in very expensive restaurants, but now I want to cook for everybody, and I want it to be accessible. I'm going to be on my own for the first time in my life. It's going to be the real Ludo."
Ludo Bites, Breadbar, 8718 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles; (310) 205-0124.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photograph by Gary Friedman
 At the Santa Monica farmers market this morning, Donato Poto, co-owner and maitre d' of Providence, stopped to give an update on the downtown brasserie he and chef Michael Cimarusti have had in the works for some months now. After scouting out and, they thought, finding a few spots that would work, they are again in limbo. According to Poto, they have a handpicked staff and are ready to go, but "until we find the right location, we're not going to do it." Poto cited parking issues, but both he and Cimarusti (formerly chef at downtown's Water Grill) are savvy enough to wait for the perfect locale.
 And while they're waiting ("it's on the front burner"), Poto, Cimarusti & Co. are busy working on the food (breakfast-lunch-dinner menu by Cimarusti, desserts and chocolates by Providence pastry chef Adrian Vasquez) for LA MILL's upcoming coffee boutique in Silverlake, set to have a soft opening in mid-October. All of the burners seem to be cranking just fine.
Providence, 5955 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles; (323) 460-4170.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photos (Cimarusti, left, and Poto, right) by Connie Aramaki
 Rumors have been aswirl lately about chef Govind Armstrong considering selling Table 8 because of slowing business. "It's definitely not true," Armstrong said on the phone last week from Nevis in the Caribbean. "It's unfortunate, but you know how bloggers are. They think they're in the know. It's the most annoying thing in the world."
Armstrong says that Table 8 is "so far from closing." The recent "Top Chef" judge says he's been spending three weeks out of the month in Los Angeles and one week in Miami or elsewhere. "L.A.'s home for me, and any time I'm in L.A., I'm at the restaurant."
On Friday night, not a lot of others were there -- the restaurant was less than half full at 9:30, but it was Labor Day weekend, and I'm blogging, so what do I know?
 Meanwhile, Sona chef David Myers says Comme Ça is set to open the last week of September or the first week of October. He says he's still tweaking the menu of "bistro classics -- steak frites, frisée lardon salad, onion soup." And yes, there's a cedilla under the "C" in Ça, so anyone who's been pronouncing it "Kum Ka" -- er, stop it.
-- Betty Hallock
Photos by Stefano Paltera (Govind Armstrong, above) and Christine Cotter (David Myers, below)
Table 8, 7661 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 782-8258; Comme Ça, 8479 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles.
 Of all the high-profile upcoming openings around town, Alain Giraud's Santa Monica brasserie, to open in the Clocktower building in Santa Monica, is one of the most exciting. When Giraud's deal with the owners of Falcon was announced back in January, Giraud hoped to open late summer, and he planned to serve lunch and dinner.
Just returned from vacation in France, Giraud filled us in on the brasserie's progress. The look, he says, will be classic brasserie, "brass, with wood, copper, banquettes, mirrors on the columns, et cetera. The restuarant will have to look as good at lunchtime as at dinnertime." It'll need to look good early in the morning too -- Giraud plans to open at 7 a.m. for breakfast.
As for the menu, "I'm still working on it," he says. "I want to base part of the menu with everything from the farmers market, to follow the seasons. I expect it to be a little bit traditional, plat du jour, appetizer, easy to understand." Dishes like steak tartare and poulet de la rôtisserie come to mind, he says, for the traditional offerings. "A brasserie menu never changes," he says, "and to add seasonal dishes has to be done very carefully." He'd like people to try things, though -- "sweetbreads, kidney. But I have to see how many we'll be selling."
While in Lyon lately, Giraud says, he was impressed by a couple of brasseries. He loved the vegetables at the one at Hotel Centrale. "All the vegetables were perfectly cooked, amazing." Did he glean any ideas he might use? "The steak tartare at Brasserie Georges," he says. "They make it tableside, but because it's so crowded, they do it right on the table, which was nice."
Late-summer opening plans turned to mid-October. But now it seems the Clocktower won't be turned over to the team until mid-November. "What it means is we have Thanksgiving, then after that December. The problem will be the staff. If they work in a nice place, you don't leave a place during the holidays. So that means January." Giraud plans to be at the restaurant "six months, eight months, all the time." After that he plans to open his own signature restaurant.
And finally: What will be the brasserie's name? "Ahem, ahem! Deadline for the name is soon!" says Giraud. "I think we give a different name to the restaurant each week. It's an embarrassing question. We have maybe 200 names. I like 'Brasserie du Marché,' but the accent on the E is a problem. I love 'the Clocktower,' but nobody likes it. 'Clocktower Brasserie!' 'Brasserie Brasserie!' If you think of a good name, call me!"
-- Leslie Brenner
Photo by Brian Vander Brug
 At lunchtime I like to walk over to Kinokuniya Bookstore in Little Tokyo and poke around in the food and fashion magazines and books. They also sell wonderful Japanese notebooks with smooth paper for fountain pens and erasers that look like miniature sushi. The other day I turned up a little book titled "Food Knit" (Toho Shuppan, $21) in the crafts section. It's mostly in Japanese with a few English subtitles. Doesn't matter, there's nothing to read. Just feast your eyes on these insanely intricate knitting projects -- a knitted hamburger with frilly mohair lettuce, a fruit tart with a fluted crust, a whole steamed fish, pasta with squid rings, bento boxes, dim sum and, my favorite, a tray of nigiri sushi with knitted nori and tiny faux salmon roe. It's not really a pattern book, though there are instructions (in Japanese) for a few simple items. 
Kinokuniya Bookstore, Weller Court, 123 Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka St., Suite 205, Los Angeles, (213) 687-4480.
-- S. Irene Virbila
Illustrations from "Food Knit"
I had a good giggle yesterday morning on reading Amanda Hesser's "Recipe Redux" story in the New York Times Magazine. Hesser, bless her young heart, dates the creation of uncooked tomato sauce for pasta to the early-to-mid-'90s, citing a 1996 New York Times recipe for "summer pasta" that involved as a sauce no more than chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil, salt and mozzarella. "After years of thinking that all pasta sauces were long-simmered affairs," she writes, "cooks were relieved to learn they they could simply chop a few tomatoes, add some seasonings and hot pasta and -- voilà! -- dinner."
I laughed because I had bought all the ingredients for the dish Saturday. I had the idea when I saw beautiful ripe heirloom tomatoes stacked up next to big bunches of basil at the supermarket. Now here was Hesser, saying one Pamela Sherrid came up with it in 1996.
 I thought back to the year I started making that very sauce. I remember it well, because it was 1980, the year a friend gave me the just-published Time-Life "Pasta" book in "The Good Cook" series. I learned the recipe (sans mozzarella) and so much more from its pages, and have made it a dozen times every summer since. It couldn't be simpler: Chop peeled and seeded tomatoes, add a little minced garlic, salt, pepper, lots of torn basil leaves and a good dose of olive oil. Let it marinate for a couple of hours, then toss it with hot pasta.
 It was a life-changing recipe, elemental and wonderful, and just about every good cook I knew in California in the early '80s made it. (Now and then I'd throw in some diced mozzarella, but I was never completely convinced by the cheese.) With the passage of time came better and better ingredients -- great fresh olive oil from Italy and Spain and California, better dried pasta, good sea salt -- and now in midsummer, the dish is positively brilliant. Last night I made it with those gorgeous heirlooms, garlic from the farmers market, a fantastic fruity olive oil from Greece, some nice torn basil, Maldon salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper. I cooked some Rustichella d'Abruzzo pasta al ceppo, tossed it with the sauce and added some roughly chopped burrata, which went all gooey.
Try it. You'll think you're back in the summer of '96.
-- Leslie Brenner
Photos by Leslie Brenner
L.A. author Clifford A. Wright relaunched his website this morning, promising a site that's "twice as informative and fun as before." On it you'll find recipes from Croatia, Algeria, Spain, Italy, France, Tunisia and more, articles on food history and links to the food world. So what's new? Wright is offering memberships, which give you 1,000 "fully tested authentic" Mediterranean recipes, "heirloom recipes that work every time" and a two-part weekly and monthly newsletter, "The World of Fool" (yes, fool), which Wright describes as "a newsletter for the gastronomically correct." The full name: FOOL (Fūl): The Alimentary Peregrinations of an American Pantagruel, Diaries of Gastronomy and Pathos in the Mediterranean.
Some of the recipes are available only to members (non-members can get the Catalan Vegetable Medley, for instance, but you've gotta pay up to get Baked Lamb Loin Chops with Garlic Cream). Meanwhile, curious about the newsletter, I clicked a link that promised a taste of it. It took me back to the home page.
But I'll be bookmarking the site, mostly for the links. It's a great compendium of online sources for hard-to-find ingredients, kitchen equipment and recipes from France, Spain, North Africa and more -- some in the original languages. Plus, you can find cooking schools, podcasts and even the websites of some favorite cookbook authors. Paula Wolfert? She's linked.
-- Leslie Brenner
 If your favorite game is Name That Restaurant while watching the HBO series "Entourage" ("appies" at the Ivy, "lobbies" at the Palm, drinkies at Mortons), then you most likely spotted Providence in this week's episode, "Sorry, Harvey."
The next challenge is to spot the culinary "anachronisms," also known as playing Who's That Bread?
As "E," one of the main characters, steps into the restaurant, it looks as if nothing's amiss. To be expected, there's some extra foxiness at the host's stand. The actor portraying the vituperative Harvey Weinstein is already seated at a table sipping a '53 Margaux. (Is that really on the wine list?) And then you see it -- the ugliest hunk of bread ever, sitting on a cheap wooden cutting board. Where are the pretty rolls from Le Pain Quotidien, served with little discs of butter and a cellar of salt, complete with tiny spoon? Weinstein's wielding what looks like a hollow-edge santoku knife and slices off a piece of bread.
Then he turns to the waiter (who's really a waiter there) and says, "Hey, pal, how long do we have to wait to get a lousy-ass 'berg wedge? You slice the [expletive] thing, you put it on a plate, and you bring it over here."
Imagine chef Michael Cimarusti, instead of preparing an amuse of watermelon soup with lemon foam served in a tiny glass, cutting a wedge of iceberg lettuce and throwing it on a plate. Maybe he's back there throwing cigarette butts in the stock too. A 'berg wedge?
Providence, 5955 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 460-4170, www.providencela.com.
-- Betty Hallock
Photograph by Connie Aramaki/For The Times
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Ferran Adria’s Los Angeles tour began Monday night with a cocktail party and Sam Nazarian’s little (let’s called it “intimate”) S Bar near the corner of Hollywood and Vine was packed with foodies, night-lifers and a smattering of hometown chefs out to greet the big man. Jose Andres, who this month is opening Bazaar in Beverly Hills with Nazarian, co-hosted in a bright red baseball cap. Suzanne Goin was there, nine months pregnant and looking ready to be done with it (as is her husband David Lentz). Alain Giraud was there as well and I ran into Nancy Silverton on her way out, leaving a little early to tend to something urgent.
