Restaurants Los Angeles

After years of debate and compromise, the Los Angeles City Council surprised even its most ardent anti-smoking advocate by giving preliminary approval Wednesday to a hard-line proposal that would ban smoking in the city's nearly 7,000 eateries. If the law receives final approval, Los Angeles would become the largest city in the nation to prohibit smoking in restaurants.

In his starched white chef's hat and jacket, Pierre Pelech fretted over renewed talk about banning all cigarette smoking in restaurants in Los Angeles. "It would be catastrophic for the restaurant business," said Pelech, co-owner of Pierre's restaurant in Los Feliz. "There would be a drop in business, and that would put people out of work." A raspy voice from the restaurant bar added: "I don't mind cigarette smoke."

Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes. --Italo Calvino, "Invisible Cities" When a restaurant "works," chances are that most happy customers don't analyze why. A couple of apercus might be tossed about in the car: The food was delicious, the service was good. Rarely, though, do we scrutinize how the physical environment contributes to having a good time. Great spaces tend to transmit their magic subliminally.

The year 1978 was not a good one for restaurants in Los Angeles. The same cannot be said for any year since. In fact, over the next decade our eating habits would change more dramatically than at any other time in recent history. Looking back at my notes from 1978, I seem to have existed on a constant diet of pate, duck a l'orange and coquilles St. Jacques. For dessert there was chocolate mousse and creme caramel.

With all the Vietnamese restaurants that have proliferated in California in recent years, perhaps it is only fitting that a cafe featuring the cuisine of Melrose Avenue should strike pay dirt in Ho Chi Minh City. Down to the cane furniture and amorphous watercolors on the walls, the City Bar and Grill is an unmistakable Los Angeles import in the former capital of South Vietnam. Take the menu.

An ordinance that would have made Los Angeles the largest city in the nation to ban smoking in restaurants was frozen indefinitely Saturday when a coalition of restaurateurs, backed by the tobacco industry, filed more than 96,000 petition signatures aimed at repealing it. The ordinance, which was to take effect Monday, was blocked by a little-known provision in the City Charter that says a measure can be held in abeyance if enough signatures are gathered within 30 days of its becoming law.

Don't get Piero Selvaggio started on the growing number of restaurants in this city--the owner of Valentino and Primi has had enough. "There's such an exaggeration of restaurants, an incredible explosion of confusion . . . an overabundance of nothing ," he says. "I think we should start talking about a moratorium on restaurants." And yet, Selvaggio is in the process of adding to the cacophony: he's opening a third restaurant of his own. So are a lot of other people.

"No. Never. Impossible," said the famous French chef. "Butter you haven't. Fresh foie gras is impossible. Game is impossible. I want fresh tarragon, fresh chervil, fresh basil. We search everywhere and do not find them. We do not find sorrel. We need port, Malaga, Madeira, Marsala. You do not have them. There are no chefs here . . . and your stoves are terrible."

Last year, when Donald J. Bohana talked of building a Denny's in the Kenneth Hahn Shopping Plaza, he referred to the shopping center as possibly the most secure mall in Los Angeles. Until last week, Bohana didn't know how right he was. The 5,000-square-foot Denny's, which will be the first family-style, sit-down restaurant to open in the Watts-Willowbrook area since the Watts riots of 1965, was under construction when rioting broke out April 29.