Hotel Bel-Air Restaurant: Los Angeles

Nation's Restaurant News, May 19, 1997 by Richard Martin

Bel-Air is famed as a lushly wooded enclave of lavish mansions in the canyon north of Sunset Boulevard, above the University of California, Los Angeles. Yet, for all the idyllic allure of the exclusive neighborhood, a drive up Stone Canyon Road to the secluded Hotel Bel-Air accords visitors an even more rarefied experience.

Gourmets, moreover, are rewarded doubly by their visit to this modern-day Eden -- 11.5 paradisiac acres containing 92 rooms and suites in tile-roofed Californian-Mediterranean buildings with cloistered courtyards, vine-covered arcades and a stately belltower. For across the arched entryway footbridge spanning the hotel's swan ponds, ensconced amid its quintessential Southern-California-garden setting, is "The Restaurant" of Hotel Bel-Air.

Long regarded as one of the foremost dining destinations in Los Angeles, the intimate hotel has been home to many of the world's most celebrated and affluent lodgers over the past half-century. A favorite of Rockefellers, Kennedys and the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, Hotel Bel-Air also was discreet enough for a Greta Garbo or a Howard Hughes and was the choice of newlyweds Elizabeth Taylor and Hilton scion Nicky Hilton.

Business leaders, too, favor the Bel-Air, which last year was selected as the world's best hotel, in Institutional Investor's "Top 100" of 120 widely traveled senior financial executives from 31 countries.

Prominent chefs have done their part to spread the hotel's renown. In the early 1980s, the luxurious property underwent a refurbishing and culinary upgrading that helped define "California cuisine" while dashing old stereotypes about high-end-hotel dining. Under the former management regime of Rosewood Hotels of Dallas, acclaimed young chefs from its flagship Mansion on Turtle Creek were deployed at the Bel-Air, including Joe Venezia as executive chef and Mansion chef Dean Fearing as consultant.

Rosewood also retained the locally based wolfgang Puck of Spago to consult at the Bel-Air, cementing Puck's notion of the hotel as the idealized venue for this personal "dream" restaurant. Another Rosewood veteran, George Mahaffey, later came on board as executive chef and furthered the Bel-Air's culinary reputation.

In the early five years since its purchase by Prince Jeffrey of Brunei, brother of the reputed richest man in the world, the hotel has maintained and enhanced that tradition under the culinary leadership of executive chef Gary Clauson, a British, native who has won numerous culinary accolades during cooking stints around the world and whose also serves as the Bel-Air's director of food and beverage.

"Hotel Bel-Air is a little different from most hotels," says Clauson, pointing out the property's unusual characteristics and the autonomy he has been granted to tailor the dining experience for new generations of guests. Among them are an increasingly younger set of well-heeled entertainment industry figures who comprise much of the hotel's local clientele.

"I don't think hoteliers know how to run a restaurant; most hotel chefs don't have that freedom," Clauson observes, explaining that, while recognizing the need for change, he must maintain "a fine balance" to serve Bel-Air's young and old guard. Known to frequent the hotel, for example, are such neighboring yet disparate luminaries as Tom Cruise and Nancy Reagan, who dines at the Bel-Air two or three times a week.

The Restaurant of Hotel Bel-Air, with its indoor seats and outdoor terrace accommodating another 60, is the property's romantic dining epicenter for breakfast, lunch and dinner, generating about $5 million in annual sales. That's more than 55 percent of the hotel's total food and beverage revenues, with much of the balance derived from intimate functions in its 150-seat banquet room and an average of five weddings each weekend.

Regular guests know that Clauson and his 27 cooks consistently create dishes befitting the Bel-Air's lofty stature, while long-tenured servers pamper diners and the hotel's 620-selection wine cellar tantalizes oenophiles, with its particular depth in fine Californian and French vintages.

One way in which the restaurant caters to discriminating guests by the food specialties made in-house. All smoked fish are prepared in the Bel-Air's kitchen, including some 60 sides of salmon each week. The hotel even makes its own mascarpone cheese and yogurt, and specially raised produce of all kinds is purchased from California's finest growers.

Select food items not available in California routinely are imported from abroad, such as the white asparagus from Holland that Clauson recently had flown in for special menus during that crop's brief, six-week season.

A recent addition to the Bel-Air's gustatory amenities is Clauson's "Table One," a private dining room in the hotel's kitchen.

Boasting a rustic French decor, hand-carved pine table and 9-foot-tall picture-window views of the cooks at work, Table One can be reserved for parties of up to eight, with customized, five-course menus starting at $75 per person.