Restaurants

AS dragons run and dance down Bolsa Avenue in Westminster during this Saturday's Tet parade celebrating the lunar New Year, the restaurants of Little Saigon will be opening their doors to floods of revelers. Many of the thousands of Vietnamese Americans who throng to the district for the holiday carnivals, concerts and events will head for favorite places that cook the regional dishes they grew up eating.

RESTAURANT diners -- when they can make themselves heard above the blaring music from a chef's iPod playlist, the clatters and shouts from an open kitchen, and the roar of the cocktail drinkers in an adjacent lounge -- are talking about restaurant noise these days more than the food. And the sound of that is finally reaching management ears.

Thank you for your fine, comprehensive article on noise in local restaurants ["The Art of Noise," by Amy Scattergood, Feb. 27]. While restaurateurs are concentrating on creating "high-energy" environments, I suspect that most of us are looking for, and patronizing, restaurants that provide an escape from our already high-energy lives. I encourage patrons to ask about the noise volume when making reservations, ask managers to lower the music volume when they arrive and comment on the appropriateness of the sound when they conclude dining.

Appeals judges in Northern Ireland have overturned an unprecedented libel verdict in which a pizzeria owner successfully sued a Belfast newspaper over a lousy review. Chief Justice Brian Kerr ruled that a jury erred last year when it awarded $50,000 to the owner of the Goodfellas in Belfast. A 2000 review in the Irish News had deemed his restaurant smoky, sloppy and unappetizing. Kerr said the jury failed to consider whether the reviewer showed malice. Irish News Editor Noel Doran said the original verdict threatened the ability of newspapers to publish reviews.

Chanticleer Holdings Inc., an investor in small companies, has agreed to buy Hooters of America Inc., Hooters Management Corp. and their related restaurants for about $55.1 million. The transaction between Chanticleer and nine individual Hooters shareholders is expected to close on or before July 31, Charlotte, N.C.-based Chanticleer said. There are 433 restaurants in 28 countries, according to Chanticleer. Hooters Inc., which sold its trademarks and other proprietary rights to Hooters of America Inc. in 2001, owns 22 restaurants, which Chanticleer will acquire.

Diners in this food-obsessed city are used to exotic offerings such as chili squid salad, risotto Milanese with oxtail ragu and marinated noisettes of venison. But this winter a controversial new item has been showing up in the fine print of menus at some of the hottest restaurants: a surcharge to help pay for worker health insurance.

"My life revolves around food and Trisha -- my favorite things in life," says Tunnell, referring to his fiancee and Dolce Group special events director, who lives with him in Hollywood. Tunnell, a 31-year-old native of Tulsa, Okla., oversees the too-cool Geisha House, Dolce, Bella, Les Deux and Ketchup. AFTER-WORK FIDDLING The weekend is our busiest time, so Friday nights I'm usually jumping around to the various restaurants. Sometimes we stop for a drink at the Cat & Fiddle in Hollywood on the way home.

The server shows off the charred bistecca fiorentina, then carves the massive porterhouse into finger-thick slices. At $160 for two, it's easily the most expensive steak I've ever eaten, if not the most expensive piece of aged meat in the country. Want to anoint it with horseradish sauce? Here at Carnevino, Mario Batali's new restaurant on the Strip, that'll be $5 more.

POLISHING off their cream-filled crepes and fruit smoothies, the after-movie crowd at Garden Cafe drifts homeward around 1 a.m. But by 3 a.m., a fresh wave of customers -- most in goth-inspired club-wear -- fills the tables at this classic Hong Kong-style coffee shop.

Taco truck owners vowed to ignore a law passed by Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday making it a misdemeanor crime -- punishable by fines and jail -- to stay parked in one place for more than an hour. "They can try to move us, but we're not going to go," said Aleida De La Cruz, whose taco truck has been a family business for 20 years. "What are they going to do, take us all to jail?"