Greetings....
Today I tell a tale of woe by the water's edge. Listen, my children,
and learn!
Ahhhhh...the seaside! Land of pleasant, solitude-inducing sea
breezes and shifting sands.....but at more than one Santa Monica
seaside restaurant, the sands have shifted with less than their
usual serenity!
"The Beach House" has a proprietress who's quite expressive...and
when Liza Etter expressed herself a bit too many times on such
subjects as time, money, and the like, superb chef Josie LeBalch,
who'd come on board the oceanfront project at its opening under
Liza's captaincy in late '98 as Executive Chef, decided to set sail
for smoother waters after a heated "discussion" of the situation.
Suddenly rudderless, Liza reached out to SousChef David Fouts (he of
"Lumpy Gravy" legerdermain in West Hollywood) and offered him the
post.
David, being both loyal to Chef LeBalch, who'd brought him into the
project in the first place, AND having experienced La Etter's temper
as a spectator, decided to decamp as well, rather than face walking
the plank sooner or later himself.
THAT of course left Etter and the Beach House without a chef, caught
in the rip-tide of emotion and attitude. Somebody call the Culinary
Bay Watch! With two of the top toques in town alienated and absent,
inquiring minds wonder who'll be daring enough to try to keep the
restaurant's kitchen from going down for the third time, hmmmm?
Well, we can now reveal the daring fellow's name in an update of an
earlier version of this story. He is Chef David Wolfe, former
owner/chef of the wonderful 2424 Pico, which closed after 3 great
years also in...Santa Monica.
Meanwhile, Chef Josie is in search of her own restaurant where the
only frictions will be self-inflicted, and Chef David Fouts is
seeking new options after first considering the post at the troubled
Dominik's and then being "this close" to taking over from departing
chef Claude Segal at Pagani--but now Pagani has closed (another "you
heard it here first" scoop, by the way) and some other lucky
restaurant will surely snap up the talented Fouts quickly.
And if all of THAT seaside shuffling of chefs wasn't enough, word
reaches Deep Toque's seashell-like ear that Neal Fraser and his
staff have left another Santa Monica restaurant, Rix, and now
cooking there is Chef Gordon Naccarato, who was the opening chef at
the tres-exclusive Monkey Bar when it first debuted years ago and
has wandered a bit since then.
And where will Fraser and HIS team wind up? Fraser and his co-chef
Chris Goossen will be at the helm as Jimmy Murphy's family reopens
the former "Jimmy's" as "Jimmy's II" along with pastry chef Darci
Tizio, who was briefly at Granita in Malibu and...yes...on the beach
more or less.
Is this culinary artistry, or is it soap opera? As you know well, my
friends, if stability was what you'd wanted in a career, you'd have
gone into the Army, not the Brigade-de-Cuisine!
That's my hot scoop of industry mudpie-slinging for today, but do
not wander far, as it is only one of what will be many, many tales
I'll tell that others dare not speak of...so never forget the only
truth in an ever-changing culinary universe:
Who knows what gossip lurks in the world of hospitality?
DEEP TOQUE KNOWS!!!
To Share Your Deepest, Darkets Secrets, Rumors, and Murmerings With
Deep Toque, the mysterious and anonymous scribe of these pages, just
click here to e-mail your insights anonymously to:
deeptoque@professionalchef.com
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