The spirit of Saint Estèphe, a restrospective celebration of the South Bay restaurant at Rivera
The question on everyone’s mind was: Will the food that was so incredibly cutting-edge in the ‘80s still hold its own 30 years late Scrambled huevos rancheros with blue corn tortilla arrows. It’s been 19 years since chef John Sedlar’s storied 1980s Manhattan Beach restaurant shut its doors. But 19 years has not been long enough to cleanse the lingering spice of Saint Estèphe from the palates of the locals — or anyone else who dined there. There is even a Facebook group called “I remember Saint Estèphe Restaurant in Manhattan Beach.” And not six months ago, Saint Estèphe was referenced in a Zagat Buzz article as the last restaurant to dazzle the South Bay before the influx of high-end dining the community has seen in the past year. Nor has Sedlar forgotten the South Bay and his adventure as a 20-something-year-old restaurateur whose first establishment built him an early reputation peppered with adjectives such as groundbreaking, cutting-edge, and transformative. It’s been three decades now since he first fused native American and Latin flavors with French nouvelle cuisine to create what would later be referred to as Modern Southwest Cuisine. In commemoration, Sedlar is doing it…
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