Corkage Fee

The Lobster Rating: One and a half stars Location: 1602 Ocean Ave. (next to the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier), Santa Monica; (310) 458-9294; http://www.thelobster.com. Price: Oyster and shellfish, $14.50 to $60; appetizers, $8 to $16; soup and salad, $9 to $23; lobster and shellfish, $16 to $46 and from $24 to $41 per pound; finfish and other entrees, $20 to $55; sides, $4 to $7; desserts, $9. Corkage fee, $25. Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday; 11:30 a.

Westsiders soon won't have to go all the way to Boyle Heights to feast on the wonderful fish tacos at La Serenata de Garibaldi. Chef-owner Jose Rodriguez is opening Taqueria Serenata, a fast-food branch of his Mexican seafood restaurant, near Pico and Westwood just down from the Westside Pavilion. Featuring tacos, burritos, tostadas, gorditas, sopas and other Mexican street food, the taqueria will open in July; prices will be in the $5- to $10-range.

One Wall Street analyst called it a "connoisseur's" bid. Another labeled it "stunning." But the question about Constellation Brands' $970-million pitch for California winemaker Robert Mondavi Corp. is whether it will be enough. "Mondavi is one of the strongest wine brands in the world," said Robert Nicholson, an investment banker who heads International Wine Associates in Healdsburg, Calif. "I don't think the rest of the industry is going to stand by without taking a look."

High-END restaurants are losing patience. For years they've accommodated diners who brought their own wine by charging them a modest corkage fee to serve it. The practice hurt profits, but only a few of the best customers tended to bring their own, so why worry? But lately -- and especially in Los Angeles, restaurateurs complain -- this BYOB thing is out of control.

OK, so L.A. has its Issan Thai restaurants, Sichuan and Shanghai style places, Tuscan trattorie and Provencal bistros, Yucatan and Oaxacan joints. Why not an East Coast clam shack? Well, now we have one, fetchingly called Blue Plate Oysterette I'm surprised no one has tried it before. There was the short-lived Menemsha, but it was a much more ambitious East Coast seafood place. That this one is small and cozy with a studied casual air and a great front of the house -- not to mention it's just across from Palisades Park and the Pacific -- gives this place a fighting chance.

With the new Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, the Austrian chef who, along with Alice Waters, begat California cuisine, has finally achieved a quintessentially Californian restaurant, one with a legendary outdoor terrace in a verdant setting with swans gliding through ponds and enormous old trees overhanging walkways and tumbling streams. And what a difference: For the first time in recent memory, the historic hotel has a serious restaurant with some seriously good food. Puck may no longer be the youngest kid on the block, but he's tough and smart and, more important, he knows how to make food that is genuinely delicious.

Pull up in front of the new Red O on Melrose and, before deigning to take your car, a valet in an embroidered guayabera and natty straw hat will lean into the window to ask, politely, if you've got a reservation. It's Mozza all over again. No reservation, no getting in. And on weekend nights, you'll need to reserve a month out. Even on the weekdays, it's the 6:30 or 9:30 routine. Try to get into the bar and the big guy posted outside the door, leaning on a lectern to make him look less like a bouncer, will nix that too. The bar is for patrons waiting for tables.

The women - in twos and threes and sixes - are on a mission. Spot Michael Voltaggio, the famously tattooed winner of Season 6 of Bravo's "Top Chef. " They linger at the door, waiting, hoping for a seat or a table. Sigh of relief. There he is, in the open kitchen of his new - and long delayed - restaurant Ink. No other restaurant in recent memory has set the blogosphere roiling in anticipation as much as this one. Voltaggio has some 126,000 followers on Twitter as of this writing and, until very recently, it's been so difficult to get reservations at the restaurant, it seems every one of those followers is intent on trying Ink at 7 or 8 p.m., cellphone cameras at the ready.