As 2001 dawned, the hype in the South Bay dining scene was our elegant future. Restaurants such as Legacy in Redondo and Beluga in Manhattan Beach offered caviar and haute cuisine, while Soleil, Francesca’s, and XinhDoi offered items so eclectic they were adrift from ethnicity. The restaurateurs who opened these places were confident that locals and visitors would favor their high-priced establishments far into the future, and they were ready to make a bundle.
None of those restaurants are still around. Eateries that opened with less fanfare and offered customers food they could recognize were more successful. Hermosa’s Fritto Misto, Poulet du Jour, Crème de la Crepe and Manhattan Beach’s Back Home in Lahaina celebrate tenth anniversaries this year and are still going strong. These successful newcomers pointed to a more enduring trend – the steady growth in eclectic ethnic food in the Beach Cities. Addi’s Tandoor would debut in 2002 with Indian dishes we’d never dreamed existed, just as nearby Phuket Thai did for regional Thai cuisine. The Beach Cities acquired their first Russian, Turkish, Filipino, and Vietnamese restaurants, and established ethnic eateries expanded their menus and went beyond their traditional communities.
The national trend in 2001 was a wave of ethnic and upmarket quick-service establishments, such as the new Panera Bread and Pan Quotidien chains and the McDonald’s spinoff called Chipotle. In the chain-averse South Bay, this translated into popularity for places such as Hermosa’s Sabor Brazil and Redondo’s Banyan Indonesian restaurant, which expanded from one location to four.
The cuisines of the previous decade were Mediterranean and Japanese, and both continued strong in the 2000s. Mediterrraneo boldly introduced traditional tapas to Hermosa and thrived, influencing many other establishments by its success. Italian restaurants abandoned caution and added more rustic and traditional dishes, including Fritto Misto’s all-you-can-eat calamari on Tuesday promotion. Since only a decade before most people in the South Bay regarded squid as fit only for bait, this was progress. (Up the street, Crème de la Crepe offered free escargot on Wednesdays, and many people ate their first snails and found out what they were later.) Japanese food too became more varied; the opening of Japonica in 2003 was a milestone. The cuisine here went far beyond Tokyo – mountain vegetables and Osaka-style preparations were a hit, and the sake bar introduced many people to the variety of flavors that can be coaxed out of fermented rice. Izakaya cuisine, sometimes called Japanese tapas, was on the map, and became firmly established in the second half of the decade. Sushi had been a symbol of luxury for some time but went both downscale and eclectic, with modestly decorated places like Blue Pacific offering endless and eclectic variations on rice rolls.
This isn’t to say that we had all abandoned the steaks and seafood that were the traditional mainstays of South Bay menus, but we were having them in more modern settings and with adventurous side items. At the high end, Kincaid’s opened in late 2000 and Waterman’s Grill in 2001 to great acclaim. Fleming’s raised the bar for everyone when they debuted in 2002, though many scoffed at the idea that locals would embrace a restaurant in an office building on Rosecrans. Towne also opened in 2002, with the then-unusual idea of taking American food seriously. This being 2002, the American traditional items had Mediterranean accents, but some of the recipes were recognizably Southern and Midwestern cooking gone high style, which was quite a novelty. That trend would accelerate after the success of Second City, which managed to make a side street in El Segundo into a destination for food and wine connoisseurs. The upscale American and market-driven menu was shockingly popular, and brought an influx of diners from the other beach cities for the first time. Other restaurateurs noticed and copied, some fusing the American concept with the dining lounges that started opening around the same time.
These targeted a young crowd with sophisticated food in a loud nightclub atmosphere, which sometimes worked but alienated older diners. After 2005, when the craze for molecular gastronomy was in the headlines, a few of these started experimenting with foams, emulsions, and savory items frozen with liquid nitrogen. The lounges that survived retreated from outlandish concepts and moved toward more conventional small plate dining.
The trend that did blossom was the steady upscaling of ethnic food. Before Chaba opened in 2004, we had never eaten Thai food from good China, and when Addi’s Tandoor reopened in 2004 it was with an interior as elegant as any French restaurant in the area. Akbar went one better with both a dazzling wine list and servers who understood food pairings, confounding people who thought the spicy, vinegary cuisine was suited only to beer. Petros took Greek food to new heights; there had been stylish Greek restaurants in the South Bay beginning with Hermosa’s Cookbook in the 1970s, but all were serving simple food in nice surroundings. Petros adopted the modern idea of buying from top-quality boutique producers in Greece and locally, and changed people’s ideas about what the cuisine could be.
Mucho and La Sirena did the same thing with Mexican food, bringing recipes from the interior of the country and serving them with contemporary flair. Ortega 120 upped the ante by serving this high-style cuisine in a setting worthy of an art museum and offering tequila pairings and other events. All three mixed the culinary arts and showmanship with success and continued to thrive.
Some establishments experimented with concepts that were obviously a result of the owners’ passions. The Arden Playhouse Teavern served English teas in a literary atmosphere, Coco Noche decided that Manhattan Beach needed a Korean restaurant specializing in chocolate desserts, and Lee’s tried to convince Hermosans that they really wanted to eat tofu and kimchee for breakfast. Soreal Cereal Café had a more conventional idea about what to eat – cereal, naturally – but failed to convince anybody that they should leave the house to do so. The most spectacular failure of the decade was Brix, which opened in the 2008 recession as the most ambitious and expensive restaurant for miles. The wine selection was huge, the staff-to-customer ratio unparalleled, celebrity chefs and bakers ready for the world to pour through the doors. The world decided to eat somewhere else, and the beautiful interior with custom brick and woodwork is now an echoing shell.
Changing tastes, owner burnout, and the vagaries of the economy meant that many worthy establishments closed; among them Reed’s, California Beach, Le Beaujoulais, Café Catalina, Avenue, and the Manhattan Bar & Grill. Other places reinvented themselves and went on to greater success. Café Pierre had a renaissance by returning to its roots; after years of focusing on fusion, the kitchen started serving charcuterie and authentic Southern French dishes with flair. Being nimble has always been Chez Melange’s strong point – the restaurant with the ever-changing menu celebrated its 25th anniversary, successfully moved to a new location, and anticipated the gastropub phenomenon with Bouzy.
Those gastropubs that are opening everywhere are the outcome of a positive trend of the decade. People are demanding good food at all price levels; dining inexpensively no longer means eating junk, and restaurants now advertise their quality ingredients and tell you which items are made in-house. A decade ago it was rare to see modest restaurants touting freshly ground burgers or bread from their own ovens or name bakeries, but it doesn’t raise an eyebrow now. Across the South Bay restaurants are serving better, healthier food than they did a decade ago. Along with the continued broadening of our ethnic dining options, it’s a hopeful sign for the next 10 years.
If you’re interested in seeing a timeline with all the South Bay restaurants that opened and closed in the last decade, it’s on our website at easyreadernews.com. ER
