Melrose

In a tight red sweater, curvy jacket and a loop of pearls, Xiomara Ardolina looks too young to have started her first restaurant in La Canada way back in 1979. She later parlayed the money she made with that first venture into a French bistro in Old Pasadena named ? Xiomara, which was Pasadena's leading French restaurant for quite a while. Even after she split with her chef Patrick Healey (now at the Buffalo Club in Santa Monica), she kept the French theme going for awhile. But when nueva cocina swept into Miami and New York, she eventually switched out the French for her take on the then-hot Latin food movement.

Six men and two women sit down to a simple dinner around a rectangular table in a glassed-in upstairs room at Osteria la Buca. It's 7:30 on a Tuesday night in spring, and the sun is just barely sinking into the city haze, leaving Melrose Avenue awash in dirty pink and gold light. The guests - all strangers - have arrived to take part in a new dinner series called the Salon at Osteria la Buca. They have been picked by the restaurant to participate based upon recommendations from previous guests and RSVP letters they composed outlining their professional accomplishments and personal philosophies.

Red-hot, Los Angeles-based vintage store Wasteland has just launched http://www.thewasteland.com. The Web site offers for sale vintage jackets, shirts, pants, denim and accessories for men and women, home furnishings, and some new designs from Rocket Baby and Smashing Grandpa. The uncanny fashion sense of Wasteland's colorful store personnel has translated well into cyberspace.

Last month, the manager of the Beverly Hills restaurant Red Medicine shamed diners who didn't turn up for their Saturday night reservations by calling them out on Twitter. "I hope you enjoyed your GF's Bday and the flowers that you didn't bring when you no-showed for your 815 res," Noah Ellis tweeted. "Thanks. " But shame is only one tactic used by restaurateurs working to make sure their seats are filled each night. This coming week, anyone looking to score a table at hotly anticipated Trois Mec, the new restaurant from celebrity chefs Ludo Lefebvre, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, will have to buy tickets - just as they would for a movie or a concert.

I enjoyed the article about Sizzler, and its depiction of Sizzler cuisine--"Is it pre-Melrose, Melrose or post-Melrose?" I've been to many Sizzlers, and the hamburger seems to have disappeared off the menu. A better question might be is the hamburger post-Melrose, or am I merely post-Sizzler? JOHN M. HENDRY Van Nuys

Kellwood Co., a St. Louis-based apparel manufacturer with a division in Chatsworth, said it has acquired David Dart Inc., a maker of upscale sportswear. Dart, based in Vernon, expects sales to exceed $30 million this year, Kellwood said. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Dart will become a division of Melrose, a Kellwood subsidiary based in Chatsworth, the companies said.

Women in Film International will be presenting three short films by Polish director Bozena Garus-Hockuba Saturday at 8 p.m. at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose. Following the screening of "Life With Paintings," "Who Feels Polish" and "Different Home," there will be a discussion with the filmmaker. Information: (213) 463-6040.

Reichl states that the Melrose eatery Johnny Rocket's is "so . . . perfectly detailed that it looks like it has sprung out of a Norman Rockwell painting." It seems doubtful that Rockwell would have painted waitress Fritze McKamey wearing a digital watch, as pictured in Iris Schneider's accompanying photograph. We can wallow in nostalgia, but we can't go back. BOB LAYTON Westwood

Magnolia Boulevard in North Hollywood has been touted as "the next Melrose" in a promotional campaign that has raised the eyebrows of some of the neighbors. But with the arrival of the Tujunga Group in "Some Assembly Required," at the Acme Comedy Theatre near the heart of the "next Melrose," that label suddenly seems less ridiculous. For every Melrose needs its Groundlings, and this "next Melrose" has found its Groundlings look-alikes in the Tujunga Group.

'Grand Theft Audio Live!' Where: The Lab at the Hollywood Improv, 8162 Melrose When: June 18, 10:30 p.m. Price: $5 Info: http://www.improv.com. 'Grand Theft Audio Presents the Hookup: Covenant House California' Where: The Laugh Factory, 8000 W. Sunset Blvd. When: June 22, 8 p.m. Price: $20 advance, $25 door Info: http://www.gtar.ticketleap.com/covenanthouse

Tal Ronnen, a chef aiming to bring veganism to the masses, opens "plant-based" restaurant Crossroads on Melrose Avenue on Thursday. The menu at Crossroads, Ronnen's first L.A. restaurant, features his vegan, Mediterranean-influenced small plates in a chandeliered, wood-floored dining room designed by Studio Collective. Ronnen, author of "The Conscious Cook," teamed with entertainment and hospitality veterans Steve Bing and Parnell F. Delcham to open the white-tablecloth, all-vegetable restaurant in the former Phillipe Chow space at the corner of Sweetzer Avenue.

The first thing anybody is going to tell you about the Hart & the Hunter, the restaurant in the new Fairfax District Palihotel, is that you should get the biscuits, which come four to an order and are served on a board. And you should get the biscuits, which are really pretty extraordinary, as light and delicate as the angel biscuits you sometimes find in the best Southern households, but also flaky at the extremities, and layered - they naturally separate into two or three finger-burning strata, which you are going to need if you want to butter them properly.

Actress Amy Locane-Bovenizer spent a season living at "Melrose Place" -- now she'll spend three years living behind bars at a New Jersey state prison. Locane-Bovenizer was sentenced Thursday to three years for vehicular homicide and three for assault by auto after a drunken June 2010 crash in which a woman was killed and her husband was critically injured. The actress was driving 53 mph in a 35 mph zone and had a blood-alcohol content nearly three times the legal limit at the time of the accident, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Cameron Silver and Christos Garkinos, owners of the upscale vintage boutique Decades on Melrose Avenue, are set to make their reality television debut March 6 with “Dukes of Melrose," Bravo TV announced Thursday.  The debut season of the long-gestating show (we first told you about it back in 2011 ), which focuses on the duo's business of buying and selling of high-end vintage women's apparel and accessories and covers locales from Hollywood walk-in closets to the auctions of Paris, was shot over the first five months of 2012 during the boutique's busy run up to the 2012 Academy Awards.

If there were a social hierarchy for independent boutiques in the proverbial school lunchroom that is L.A., the cool kids would likely sit on West 3rd Street - and not just for close proximity to the Chinese chicken salad at Joan's on Third. Though stores from Abbot Kinney to Echo Park may be equally shoppable, the West 3rd shopping district between Fairfax and La Cienega boasts untouchables such as Satine and Milk that have long set the standard for respected West Coast style, emitting a vibe at once hipster, California-relaxed and refined (nothing macrame here unless it's Isabel Marant; nothing studded unless it's Alexander Wang)

Amy Locane-Bovenizer, the "Melrose Place" actress who played Sandy to Grant Show's Jake in the first season of the original series, was found guilty Tuesday of vehicular homicide related to a June 2010 accident that left a 60-year-old woman dead in central New Jersey. The conviction on that charge and a separate one of assault by auto capped a trial that ran about a month and a half and saw some 50 people take the stand. Locane-Bovenizer was not one of them. According to the prosecution, the community-theater actress was drinking at a cast party and then later at a barbecue she attended with her family before hitting the road alone in her SUV. PHOTOS: Celebrity portraits by The Times Prosecutors said the actress had a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit and was traveling 53 mph in a 35-mph zone when her SUV slammed into a sedan that was turning left, the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported.

Paramount Pictures withheld profit from such hit movies as "Mission: Impossible 3," "Jackass 2" and the "Transformers" trilogy, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by one of the studio's key co-financing partners. The complaint was filed Tuesday on behalf of investors in the Melrose 2 co-financing fund, named after the street where Paramount is headquartered. Among the accusations is that the studio underestimated revenue on films by up to $16.3 million and that it improperly attributed $3 million in charitable donations to movie budgets.

When he's not seriously beautifying the locals at Cush, the Beverly Hills salon he co-owns, Rodriguez, 40, is painting or creating silver jewelry inspired by his Mexican and skater punk roots in Thousand Oaks. ONE-STOP SHOPPING I'd start on a strip of Melrose just west of LaBrea. First a late breakfast at the Vienna Cafe. After that, Selector for underground mix tapes -- hip-hop and reggae -- for the salon. Across the street is Munky King, which sells vinyl dolls.

It's not just any fashion brand that can get A-listers Cameron Diaz and Reese Witherspoon to come out for a store opening on a Friday night in L.A. on a stretch of Melrose that until now has been a retail wasteland. But British-born, New York-based Rag & Bone designers Marcus Wainwright and David Neville did just that when they threw a party last month for the opening of their mammoth, 9,000-square-foot L.A. flagship that was hosted by Bee Shaffer, the daughter of Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour.

Cameron Silver, owner of the vintage shopping institution Decades, has spent the last 15 years teaching Hollywood and the fashion world that what's old is new. And now he has written a book on the subject. "Decades: A Century of Fashion" (Bloomsbury, $60) , co-written with Rebecca DiLiberto, is the colorful story of 20th century fashion and trends told decade by decade, through more than 200 images of celebrity style icons and designer clothing. In the introduction, Silver explains that he started his career as a cabaret singer and came to fashion accidentally: After stumbling upon so many gently-used treasures during his travels while on tour as a performer, he eventually decided to open a shop to sell them in a high-end setting.