Westwood welcomes restaurant revival: Dragos, RUI included

Nation's Restaurant News, March 22, 1999 by Amy Spector

Los ANGELES -- In a bid to woo back Westwood Village's affluent consumers, business leaders of the bustling Los Angeles neighborhood successfully have recruited regional and national restaurant operators to locate there, replacing some of the hamburger shops and pizza parlors that had come to dominate the 70-year-old retail district below the UCLA campus.

Jeff Knight, partner in the 120seat, Hawaiian-theme Maui Beach Cafe, is considered by his peers to be a "pioneer" of Westwood's upscale renaissance. He originally opened the restaurant on the central Westwood Boulevard corridor two years ago with the young, hip students of the University of California, Los Angeles, in mind.

But late last year Knight replaced Maui Beach's "whimsical," surf-and-sea decor with stylish glass lamps, softer colors and tropical-fiber surfaces to appeal to the area's more sophisticated residential clientele. The new decor is also more in line with the cuisine of executive chef Mako Segawa-Gonzales, who trained under noted chef-restaurateur Roy Yamaguchi in Hawaii.

Maui Beach Cafe's sales, which topped $2 million in 1998, have increased 30 percent since the redesign, Knight said.

Knight and others in a newly formed Westwood Village restaurant association intend to draw back as patrons many of the 535,000 residents in the surrounding 5-mile radius, where average family incomes are about $120,000. Much of that affluence, however, had been redirected to shopping and dining opportunities outside the area in recent years, after Westwood Village's image suffered from incidents of crime and violence in the late 1980s.

Knight said fully one-third of the $3 million he and his partners spent to develop Maui Beach Cafe was spent in marketing efforts to promote Westwood as a destination. By handing out a "Best Bets" sheet with the menu, listing weekly cultural events in the area, "we've connected the relationship between the culinary experience and the cultural experience," Knight said.

Just a few doors down from Knight's establishment, Tanino and Calogero Dingo, brothers of well-known local chef-restaurateur Celestino Drago, opened the 130-seat Tanino Ristorante, with partner Franco Simplicio. The two brothers left their duties at the restaurant Drago in Santa Monica last November to start the latest of the brothers' upscale Italian concepts, in a space modeled in 1929 after the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy -- an architectural flavor in keeping with much of the Mediterrean-inflected Westwood Village area. Guest checks at Tanino have averaged from $20 to $22 for lunch and from $35 to $40 for dinner in the first four months of operation, Tanino Drago said.

Further down the block, the Beverly Hills-based, three-unit Mr. Chow's chain will debut its EuroChow concept in April. Owner Michael Chow has spent a reported $5 million to turn the landmark Dome Building, which features Mediterranean design elements and a domed foyer, into his Euro-Asian, dual-menu restaurant, which is decorated with chairs, tables and set pieces Chow himself designed.

EuroChow, though white-tablecloth in orientation, will offer a more moderately priced menu than the high-end Mr. Chow's locations, with the new place featuring noodle dishes from Asia and Italy.

Although Westwood area rents -- on the rise from $2 to $4 per square foot -- impose limits on tenant options, landlords still are cutting deals to lure recognized restaurant brands, according to Bob Walsh, president of the Westwood Village Community Alliance, or WVCA, the village's business improvement district. Walsh estimated that since the WVCA's creation in 1995, new owners have taken control of 70 percent of the buildings in the foursquare-block area bounded by UCLA on the north, Wilshire Boulevard on the south, and Glendon and Gayley avenues, respectively, on the east and west.

Center West, which owns the building where Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited Inc., or RUI, will open the 11th branch of its Palomino "Euro-Bistro" chain next month, is one such example. General partner Kam Hekmat said said the company had waited eight years to find the proper tenant for its 9,100-square-foot ground level space at the corner of Wilshire and Glendon. Although Hekmat did not specify details, he said the package to sign RUI included compromises on rental costs and landlord contributions to the facility.

Rick Giboney, vice president of brand development for 27-unit RUI, said the company "felt [Westwood] was a great candidate for a rebound." He said the area's huge office base, access to highways and active business-improvement association convinced RUI to shift operations from its popular Stepps restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, whose general manager and executive chef will be relocated to the Palomino location as a consequence of Stepps' closure following its aborted lease renegotiations. Giboney described Palomino's setting as a "romantic interpretation of Mediterranean restaurants."

Also joining the development boom is locally based California Pizza Kitchen Inc, which will open a 5,000-square-foot branch of its 90-unit, full-service "gourmet" pizza chain in May to coincide with a major film debut at the neighboring Village Theatre, according to CPK chairman Larry Flax. He pointed to the success of the neighboring Jerry's Famous Deli, whose Westwood location reported $5.8 million in sales in 1998, as one sign of the village's potential.