Two for the stoves

CALL it the battle of the soft-shell crab. Quinn Hatfield, chef and co-owner of Hatfield's, didn't want them on his menu -- they're best eaten simply, he thought, and he knew that they'd be so popular that he'd be cooking crabs all evening instead of artfully plating his signature dishes. But the L.A. restaurant's pastry chef disagreed. And last weekend, Hatfield pan-fried crabs until they sold out.

Hatfield's pastry chef admittedly has more clout than most. She's the restaurant's co-owner -- and the chef's wife. "It's unbelievable how much they sell," said Karen Hatfield. So it was a smart decision from a business standpoint, but also from an aesthetic one: Arm slightly twisted, Quinn created a dish that was simple yet elevated. The crabs, lightly seared and matched with a nuanced succotash, were fantastic.

This kitchen dynamic isn't just one restaurant's brief epiphany; it's becoming an increasingly common business model. Husband-and-wife teams, almost all chef-pastry chef combos, are helming an impressive number of L.A.'s best new restaurants -- it's a trend that's reached such critical mass, that it's actually changing the L.A. restaurant scene. In addition to Hatfield's, there's Fraiche in Culver City and Marche Modern in Costa Mesa -- all open less than a year and all owned and run by married duos. Bastide, that temple of culinary aspiration on Melrose Place, will have a married pair as executive chef and pastry chef when it reopens next month. And then there is the first wave, restaurants that opened in the last few years with chef couples heading the kitchen, including the acclaimed Literati II in West L.A. and Beacon in Culver City.

None of these restaurants follows the old European model of the well-toqued man running the kitchen and his wife, aproned and smiling, out front. This is a new paradigm: a small, serious restaurant run (and usually owned) by a team of highly trained chefs. These are small, focused restaurants that work to articulate the technical skill and aesthetic choices of two people with a clearly defined -- and very united -- front. The menus are vastly different, from Beacon's Japanese fusion to Fraiche's gutsy Italian to Marche Modern's sophisticated take on French country fare. But there's a similarity in the seamlessness of the menus, in the intimacy of the restaurants, and in the purposefulness of, as the Hatfields repeatedly called it, "the big picture."