Earth Day is Tuesday, and blue on blue at the Avalon in Beverly Hills has a special prix fixe menu featuring organic wines and dishes such as venison carpaccio and roasted halibut. A portion of the proceeds raised this week will go to Global Green USA. We’re all for it. You might as well eat for a good cause.
Lots of local restaurants are going green these days, but another color has caught my attention lately, too. What’s up with all the white? In the last few weeks, I have eaten at three L.A. restaurants with all-white dining rooms: Ortolan, Kumo and Murano. The three restaurants don’t have much else in common. Ortolan, a joint venture between actress Jeri Ryan and her chef/husband Christophe Eme, is all elegant French food featuring creative gelees, consumees (where, oh where is my accent aigu?) and confits.
Kumo, meaning cloud, is the latest Japanese venture from Michael Ovitz. Whatever you think of Ovitz–and believe me, I could share some tales of his dastardly deeds from my days as TV Editor at Variety, where I worked alongside Anita Busch–his restaurant is one of the most exquisitely designed I have seen in awhile. Above the sushi bar is a trippy anime video installation called “City Glow” by Chiho Aoshima, a student of Murakame. Still, the place could be doing a lot more business, and I have to wonder whether the town’s Schadenfreude toward Ovitz, not to mention all the press surrounding the Pellicano trial, is taking its toll.
I’m rooting for Murano in West Hollywood to succeed, if only because the talented young chef, Kristi Richey, went to the same high school as my Dad in rural Pennsylvania. Her food is far from provincial. All her pastas are made fresh daily, and the duck cannelloni is to die for. The burrata and prosciutto salad is luscious, too. Murano, with its mod design and Murano glass chandeliers, also features a swanky lounge area. The lights in the joint slowly dim, and the music gets more upbeat as the night progresses. But if you order the bread pudding–and we recommend you do–you’ll probably be so absorbed in its utter deliciousness that you won’t notice anything else. I know my eyes closed involuntarily every time I took a bite. Jenny
