Restaurants Los Angeles

His friends believed that Raul O. Martinez had lost his mind. Martinez had a plan to sell soft-shell tacos out of a renovated ice cream truck on the streets of East Los Angeles. "How will you sell those kinds of tacos?" he was asked. Despite the skepticism, Martinez, his wife and father at his side, parked the truck next to an East Los Angeles bar on a summer night in 1974. Martinez sold $70 worth of tacos that first night and soon afterward was selling $150 an evening.

The last surviving Brown Derby restaurant building, which dodged the wrecking ball in the mid-2000s, has been sold for $9.25 million to local investors. The domed structure at Los Feliz Boulevard and Hillhurst Avenue in Los Angeles was the fourth Brown Derby, a small restaurant chain popular with the entertainment industry in Hollywood's Golden Age. The sellers, a group led by Adler Realty Investments Inc. of Woodland Hills, had let go of their plans to raze the building and build a five-story condominium and retail complex.

The fact that wine, from the most humble to the most exalted, is packaged in breakable containers becomes a critical issue in earthquakes. And when Monday's temblor hit, Southern California lost some of the greatest wine in the world. Many restaurant wine cellars throughout the Southland were hard hit, but the largest loss, reported in Wednesday's Times, occurred at Valentino, the Santa Monica Italian restaurant that had one of the world's finest restaurant wine collections.

By all accounts, West Hollywood showered its employees with generosity. The city spent $2,070 at the Beverly Center for six Montblanc pens, given to workers who had reached employment milestones. An additional $1,500 went to Gelson's Market gift cards for city employees. One credit card in the city manager's office, used by various employees, accumulated $121,000 over three years. Then there were the meals. Receipts show that one city councilman, John Duran, charged dozens of meals, often multiple times a week.

WHEN HE WAS a child, there was plenty of space: Josh Schweitzer's early Midwestern memories include a lush, untouched ravine hard by a babbling brook, rolling rural vistas that met the sky uninterrupted and a rambling wreck of an outsized colonial mansion with too many rooms, too many fireplaces and an abandoned barn out back for him, his brother and sister to play in. Now the only room to move is in his imagination.

Lawry's California Center, a Los Angeles attraction for the past 30 years, will close on Jan. 3, yet another Southland culinary landmark to fall during the recent recession. Its cost-conscious owner, Thomas J. Lipton Co. of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., said Monday that the closure of the 17-acre site northeast of Dodger Stadium is part of a companywide consolidation.

The cruise ship Princess Louise--a popular floating restaurant that occupied a berth at Los Angeles Harbor for two decades until it fell on hard times last year--mysteriously capsized Monday at a shipyard slip where it was being readied for sale. "She fell splat into the water and then it was glog, glog, glog," said Michael Barnes, first mate of the Spirit of Los Angeles, a 600-passenger ship that was on a luncheon cruise nearby when the Princess Louise went down about 12:30 p.m.

Years ago, a young man approached the table occupied by CBS commentator Eric Sevareid in the Cock'n Bull restaurant on the Sunset Strip and asked if Sevareid would help him impress his girlfriend by stopping at the bar on his way out to say hello. A few minutes later Sevareid graciously complied--and the young man growled: "Bug off, whoever you are! Can't you see we're busy?"

The "foodski, funski and brewski" are gone-ski. Gorky's is kaput. Twelve years after downtown's best-known bohemian hangout opened in the name of cheap java for the working class, Gorky's Cafe and Russian Brewery has quietly shut down, leaving nothing but the coffeepot and a bill for back rent. "So Long, L.A.," reads the sign on the window. "They done cleared out," nodded a panhandler in a nearby cardboard box.

Eleven years ago Bruce Marder was sleeping on a banquette at a restaurant called Cafe California. At night he went to a friend's house to shower. In the daytime he was the restaurant's chef. He was also the waiter. And the dishwasher. "After the first week my partner and I pooled our tips and hired a dishwasher," he says. "We just kept moving up." Way up. Today Marder has built a $500 investment in a funky Santa Monica restaurant into an empire. Marder's third restaurant, the $2.

  Dear SOS: I am addicted to the Tuscan kale salad at Little Dom's in Los Angeles. I love kale no matter how I prepare it, but it never tastes quite as delicious as the Dom's salad. I am hoping it's 100% guilt free, but maybe there's a sinful ingredient in there somewhere? Any chance you can look into this for me? Elise Barclay Atwater Village Dear Elise: Because of its rather tough texture, greens like kale are often cooked to tenderize them before serving.

The overhaul of gift stores, beverage stands and restaurants at Los Angeles International Airport moved ahead Wednesday when the City Council approved the first round of new concession contracts and rejected further investigation of the bidding process. Some of the outlets could be in place by summer, officials said. The nine contracts, which affect Terminals, 4, 5, 7 and 8, were awarded on a 12-1 vote with Councilman Tony Cardenas the only holdout. Cardenas had urged his colleagues to postpone the vote and resume a probe by a special council panel into whether the bids were evaluated "fairly, responsibly and legally" by airport officials.

Crisp, impossibly airy cookies served straight from the freezer, their centers stuffed with slick buttercream, seem almost Space Age. They're somehow both sturdy and weightless. They dissolve the second they touch your tongue. These otherworldly treats are silvanas , colorful and classic Filipino cookies that could easily be mistaken for oversized French macarons . They're the namesake of House of Silvanas, a months-old sweets shop at the confluence of Silver Lake and Little Armenia.

Men in rubber boots are swinging axes in the ice mist of the Tsukiji fish market. Frozen tuna skitters and slides across the warehouse floor, white slabs looking nothing like the delicate red flesh that will be sliced and rolled onto pretty plates in the sushi bars of Moscow, Berlin and Los Angeles. Thwacks and clatter echo through the 5:30 a.m. auction on the Tokyo waterfront; it is the moment when the tuna harvest meets the calculations of international financial markets. Much of the world sleeps when prices are set on a fish that has become as precious to the sushi business as gasoline is to drivers.

If location is everything, then most L.A. restaurants should be severely in trouble. Unless that pretty new bistro or charming trattoria is just around the corner, you're not going to spot it while you're whizzing down Pico Boulevard or passing by high above on the freeway. In a sense, every restaurant in L.A. is a destination restaurant, because you have to make an effort to go, armed with a MapQuest printout or your faithful Thomas guide.

Rocio Mojica has always had a talent for making tamales. She uses pork and chicken, with green and red chiles, wraps them in cornhusks and steams them to perfection. From a wooden cart decorated with a white-and-yellow sign advertising "Central Mexican Tamales" at the edge of MacArthur Park, Mojica served more than 300 of her creations Saturday on paper plates with a napkin on the side. She is one of the first legal vendors to sell hot food on the streets of Los Angeles.

Dismayed by television reports of unsanitary practices in restaurants, Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs urged his colleagues Friday to ask the county to toughen its health regulations and crack down more swiftly on violators. "You've got to be sure that the moment the cameras go away, you don't go back to business as usual," said Wachs, who introduced a motion urging the county to demand better training for restaurant employees and give more power to its own health inspectors.

Ballroom dancing or nude dancing? Those are the two types of dancing being proposed for a seafood restaurant in Northridge. Seven for the Money Inc., a Los Angeles firm, has applied for a permit to operate a combination restaurant and juice bar featuring nude dancers at the site of The Breakers Seafood Co., located near the corner of Corbin Avenue and Nordhoff Street.

With business off considerably at many local restaurants since Sept. 11, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn unveiled a program Thursday to coax Southland residents back to their favorite bistros, pizzerias and other eateries. So far, 103 area restaurants have agreed to offer 20% discounts on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays through Dec. 20, part of a Dine LA campaign aimed at providing a shot in the arm for an industry that has wilted badly from a drop in tourism and consumer spending.

The Fashion District offers plenty of places to stop and grab a snack or have a meal. Here are a few: Angelique Cafe, 840 S. Spring St., (213) 623-8698. A French cafe with terrace dining serving gourmet salads, vegetarian plates and hot dishes such as beef bourguignon, duck and escargots . All items less than $9. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, 210 E. Olympic Blvd., No. 120, (213) 749-5746. A place to refresh with a snack or drink after trekking through Santee Alley. Cole's P.E. Buffet Inc.