L Orangerie

Having been a regular at L'Orangerie for some years now, I couldn't believe that it wasn't included amongst Los Angeles' finest. I was even more shocked when Reichl stated: "L'Orangerie offers a gorgeous setting, but the last meal I had there was so disappointing--amateur service, high prices and food that was little more than bistro cooking." I have, to date, never had a bad meal or bad service at the restaurant. MICHAEL CAINE Beverly Hills

Chef moves where? Readers will sometimes write in about a restaurant that's been gone for 10 or more years, wondering what happened. Maybe they don't get out much, but even frequent restaurant-goers can get so distracted with all the new places opening that they miss the quiet slipping away of an old favorite. For anybody wondering what happened to French chef Jean-François Meteigner when he closed up La Cachette Bistro in Santa Monica in late 2011, the L'Orangerie alum is now cooking in - Vietnam !

I had been a faithful customer of L'Orangerie for 20 years ("Toque of the Town," by S. Irene Virbila, Sept. 24). My wife and I loved that restaurant and always looked forward to dining there. When we went to L'Orangerie a couple of months ago, it was overcrowded; people were stuffed around tables that had been placed too close to each other. The smell of the overhanging flowers was overpowering. The service was swift, so much so that we felt we were at a fast-food restaurant. My entree consisted of five overly salted scallops topped by cardboard-like truffles and surrounded by a bed of intensely bitter greens.

Ludo Lefebvre has been named one of the World's 50 Greatest Chefs by Relais & Chateaux, despite not having a restaurant of his own. A French native, Lefebvre quickly made a name for himself in Southern California  as the executive chef at L'Orangerie and then improved on that at short-lived Bastide. In 2007, he launched LudoBites and helped usher in the pop-up roving gourmet restaurant movement.  He starred in the Sundance Channel's "Ludo Bites America" and has also appeared on "Top Chef Masters" and "Iron Chef.

Re the article on Chicago by Beverly Beyer and Ed Rabey (Aug. 11): I feel that any visitors to Chicago should include a dinner at Le Francais restaurant, 269 S. Milwaukee Ave., Wheeling (a northwest suburb), on their itinerary. It's about a 45-minute drive from downtown Chicago, but for what is probably the best food in the country, it's worth it. This restaurant is the answer to a hedonist's dreams. In terms of food and service, I think it towers over such local establishments as L'Ermitage, Bernard's, La Toque, Rex, L'Orangerie, Ma Maison, Max au Triangle, Spago, Michael's, etc. It's expensive; figure at least $85 a person (including appetizers, entree, dessert and wine)

Ludo Lefebvre has been named one of the World's 50 Greatest Chefs by Relais & Chateaux, despite not having a restaurant of his own. A French native, Lefebvre quickly made a name for himself in Southern California  as the executive chef at L'Orangerie and then improved on that at short-lived Bastide. In 2007, he launched LudoBites and helped usher in the pop-up roving gourmet restaurant movement.  He starred in the Sundance Channel's "Ludo Bites America" and has also appeared on "Top Chef Masters" and "Iron Chef.

Chef moves where? Readers will sometimes write in about a restaurant that's been gone for 10 or more years, wondering what happened. Maybe they don't get out much, but even frequent restaurant-goers can get so distracted with all the new places opening that they miss the quiet slipping away of an old favorite. For anybody wondering what happened to French chef Jean-François Meteigner when he closed up La Cachette Bistro in Santa Monica in late 2011, the L'Orangerie alum is now cooking in - Vietnam !

RICHIE NOTAR -- the magnetic managing partner of the vanguard sushi chain Nobu -- has a rich, honey-colored tan; tousled brown hair rubbed through with shiny product; and teeth as white as freshly sliced sea bass. He's dressed in designer jeans, soft leather shoes and a smart white shirt unbuttoned to reveal a silver pendant. He exudes a slightly goofy but well-rehearsed charm; his smile says, "Aren't we having fun?" while his keen chocolate-colored eyes flash a warning: "I'll eat you for breakfast if you mess with me. " At 48, he has overseen the opening of 16 of acclaimed sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa's namesake restaurants around the world and is working on what he believes to be his most important project to date: Nobu Los Angeles in the former L'Orangerie space on La Cienega in West Hollywood.

During the 1952 Olympic Games, Katalin Szoke won two gold medals in swimming for her Hungarian team. Thirty-three years later, now a California resident married to a very successful developer, Arpad Domyan (he was a member of the Hungarian water polo team that also won a gold medal in 1952), Kati was inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last month. It's all heady stuff and worthy of the kind of party Arpad gave for Kati last weekend.

New Yorker Richie Notar, the managing partner of Nobu restaurants, has a new excuse to soak up the left coast's gentle winter rays: he's opening a second L.A. Nobu in the former L'Orangerie on La Cienega. The launch has been pushed back to February, a minor inconvenience that has granted Notar -- an optimistic power player with razor-sharp business sense -- extra time to perfect his formula for success. -- WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE NEW NOBU? We're going to have a reservation-less lounge/bar with an almost-full menu.

In years past, Yvan Valentin crafted elaborate mousse-filled meringue cakes for Frank Sinatra, built a towering croquembouche (a cream puff pyramid decorated with pulled sugar) for Jane Fonda and Ted Turner's wedding and constructed a chocolate replica of downtown's Union Station for President Clinton. But these days, the well-pedigreed French pastry chef is more interested in the rough-hewn chocolate truffles that are the heart of his Leimert Park chocolate factory and wholesale bakery.

If you are to believe the glossy food magazines, the American restaurant of the year is Bazaar, an overdecorated Beverly Hills hotel restaurant that blends avant-garde Spanish cooking, gaudy French design and old-fashioned American showmanship into a kind-of Cirque du Soleil of food -- a place where it is nearly impossible to figure out where the dining room ends and the gift shop begins. Bazaar is a place where olives are liquid and puffs of cotton candy have fattened goose liver at their core; it is a screaming, postmodern critique of an overheated consumer moment that at the moment seems very far away.

RICHIE NOTAR -- the magnetic managing partner of the vanguard sushi chain Nobu -- has a rich, honey-colored tan; tousled brown hair rubbed through with shiny product; and teeth as white as freshly sliced sea bass. He's dressed in designer jeans, soft leather shoes and a smart white shirt unbuttoned to reveal a silver pendant. He exudes a slightly goofy but well-rehearsed charm; his smile says, "Aren't we having fun?" while his keen chocolate-colored eyes flash a warning: "I'll eat you for breakfast if you mess with me. " At 48, he has overseen the opening of 16 of acclaimed sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa's namesake restaurants around the world and is working on what he believes to be his most important project to date: Nobu Los Angeles in the former L'Orangerie space on La Cienega in West Hollywood.

New Yorker Richie Notar, the managing partner of Nobu restaurants, has a new excuse to soak up the left coast's gentle winter rays: he's opening a second L.A. Nobu in the former L'Orangerie on La Cienega. The launch has been pushed back to February, a minor inconvenience that has granted Notar -- an optimistic power player with razor-sharp business sense -- extra time to perfect his formula for success. -- WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM THE NEW NOBU? We're going to have a reservation-less lounge/bar with an almost-full menu.

TWO of Los Angeles' quintessential restaurants will soon disappear off the city's dining map. After 29 years of serving French haute cuisine to Angelenos, L'Orangerie "will be no more," says owner Gerard Ferry. He has sold the restaurant -- a package deal that includes everything in the restaurant, including the well-stocked wine cellar, to Nobu Matsuhisa and his original partner in the Nobu chain of restaurants, Robert De Niro, for an undisclosed price.

THE scaffolding that has enfolded the Orangerie Museum since 2001 has been removed. The heavy equipment is gone, and ash trees on the terrace have been newly trimmed. Paris monuments seem to be in a continual state of transition and touch-up, but the changes at the southwestern corner of the Tuileries Gardens heralded something special: the long-awaited re-opening last week of L'Orangerie, home of Claude Monet's Impressionist masterwork of waterlilies.

David Wynns chef, Les Deux Cafes, Hollywood The best meal I had last year was at Georges Blanc [in Vonnas, France], and it was the breakfast delivered to our room one morning. I was feeling completely stuffed from dinner the night before and didn't want to eat anything, so when my friend ordered breakfast, he ordered only for one.

Dinner at L'Orangerie inevitably evokes a sense of occasion. The French restaurant, which is 27 years old now, has the elegant thing down cold. That moment when you step from your Chevy or your Corniche onto the candlelit terrace is sheer magic. Orange blossoms perfume the air. Through the window you can see wineglasses laid out on the bar, sparkling in the soft candlelight. At the grand piano, a heartbreakingly young pianist in a demure cloche dashes off showers of notes.

Gerard Ferry is perched on a stool at the hostess podium at L'Orangerie, the grande dame of the city's formal French restaurants. Gold wire frames balanced near the end of his nose, he scans the reservation list. L'Orangerie is going to be busy this Thursday night, he notes, good news for the slow days of early August.