It's a sign of the times: Anisette's Alain Giraud will be handing out free samples from a food truck on the Third Street Promenade. "I've never worked inside a truck so I don't want to get too ambitious," he says of the French delicacies he will prepare.
That's not a permanent change of venue, of course. Giraud is one of five well-known Southern California chefs who will be participating in a promotion in advance of dineLA's first fall Restaurant Week, which will begin Oct. 4.
But while Giraud may not be ambitious, that's certainly not the case with dineLA, which hit on the canny idea of tapping into the food truck fad that has taken the city's popular imagination by storm.
Giraud will spend one day on the dineLA truck, which was donated by RoadStoves, the same mobile food truck company that helped the Kogi Korean barbecue taco truck redefine road rage. The other chefs who will cook on wheels and hand out free tastes are Eric Greenspan from the Foundry on Melrose, Jason Johnston from Dakota at the Roosevelt, Walter Eckstein from Lawry's the Prime Rib and John England from downtown's new Rosa Mexicano.
Since its January 2008 inception, dineLA Restaurant Week has taken a circuitous route to success. The first year saw the participation of 143 restaurants, with high-end restaurants noticeably missing. But then came the fall when, as Greenspan puts it, "the bottom fell out of the Earth economically" and restaurants took a mighty body blow. When dineLA rolled back around in January 2009, 175 restaurants signed on. This October there will be 250, and there's another week planned for January 2010.
In a recession, Greenspan says, dining out is the first luxury to be eliminated and the last to be reinstated.
Perhaps that's why next month's edition of the event is no longer lacking in marquee names. Besides Giraud, other newcomers include Josiah Citrin with Cache, John Sedlar with Rivera, Michael McCarty with Michael's and Josie Le Balch with Josie.
"Fine-dining restaurants are getting that it's not a black eye and it's not a coupon ploy," says Carrie Kommers, director of dineLA, which is a division of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. "It's not about giving away the farm, it's about showcasing what you can do."
