WALT DISNEY PARKS AND RESORTS® AND PATINA RESTAURANT GROUP
FORM 20-YEAR ALLIANCE AT EPCOT
NEW YORK, NY, April 20, 2007– The Patina Restaurant Group announced today that Walt Disney Parks and Resorts has selected it to be the operating participant for the restaurant at the Italy Pavilion at Epcot in Orlando, Fla. The new operation will begin September 1, 2007. Notably, the Patina Restaurant Group was also one of the original operating participants at the Disneyland Resort’s Downtown Disney District in Anaheim, starting in 2001.
"We are proud of our long-term relationship with the Walt Disney Company and are gratified to see it grow," said Nick Valenti, President and CEO, Patina Restaurant Group. "Disney is a name synonymous with quality and creativity – two characteristics that we strive to emulate," added Joachim Splichal, Chef and Founder of the Patina Group. "We look forward to developing a truly outstanding restaurant for the visitors to Epcot."
"The World Showcase at Epcot was designed to continually evolve and offer new guest experiences that showcase cultures, traditions, and immersive entertainment," said Maribeth Bisienere, Vice President, Alliance Development and Operating Participants, Walt Disney World Resort. "With the Patina Restaurant Group coming on board, our guests will have the best of both worlds – gourmet cuisine and first-class service. We’re very excited to have an industry leader like the Patina Restaurant Group operating the Italy Pavilion restaurant."
The Patina Restaurant Group was formed by Valenti and Splichal in November, 2006 from elements of Restaurant Associates and the Patina Group. The Patina Restaurant Group is focused on operating in the premium segments of the restaurant and food service industry in major cities, cultural centers and sports and entertainment venues.
About Patina Restaurant Group
The Patina Restaurant Group (www.patinagroup.com) is the nation’s leading multi-concept operator in the premium segments of the restaurant and food service industry. In New York City its portfolio includes the world-famous Ice Rink and The Sea Grill at Rockefeller Center; the Brasserie; and the Grand Tier at the Metropolitan Opera House. On the West Coast the portfolio includes the renowned Patina Restaurant in Walt Disney Concert Hall; Nick & Stef’s Steakhouse; Catal and three other restaurants in the Anaheim Disneyland Resorts Downtown Disney District®; Leatherby’s Café Rouge at the Orange County Performing Arts Center; Julia’s Kitchen at COPIA in Napa; Pinot Brasserie in Las Vegas; and Catering and food service in museums and cultural centers throughout Southern California.
About Epcot at Walt Disney World
Walt Disney World Resort is a contiguous 40-square-mile, world-class entertainment and recreation center. Epcot is the Walt Disney World discovery park, where guests are immersed in a celebration of both technological accomplishments and international cultural achievements. The 300-acre theme park encompasses two unique worlds -- Future World and World Showcase -- with attractions, shows, entertainment, dining, shopping and architectural wonders. Please visit www.wdwpublicaffairs.com or www.wdwnews.com for more information.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Patina In News - February 2007
The Patina Restaurant Group Gorges: Smith & Wollensky Purchase, Maple Drive Renovation
Monday, February 26, 2007
Just when you think Joachim Splichal's Patina Restaurant Group is gorged, it pops another morsel in its mouth. It was announced today that the LA and NY-based group bought the Smith & Wollensky national steakhouse chain, which includes all restos except the ones in New York (Smith & Wollensky's CEO retains ownership of those, plus its partner brands). "When we bought ourselves back last year, our goal was to expand premium restaurants on both coasts," Splichal told Eater LA. For now, the chain will remain as it is, no fancy steakhouse additions or classic Splichal French aesthetics will be brought in…yet. "This is our first acquisition, and we'll evaluate it," he said. "It's a good brand in good locations with good revenue. Right now we want it to stay the same." The group plans to take the S&W brand worldwide.
Splichal and the Patina Group are working on several other local projects (natch), like turning the shuttered Maple Drive into a "contemporary, hip" seafood restaurant. Clive Wilkinson Architects has been tapped to do the design; the firm made Google's Silicon Valley headquarters one of the coolest---as in "we're adults but can we please have an office like a playground"---offices on the planet. Splichal said the yet unnamed resto will open in late September or early October. The Splichal culinary seed empire keeps spreading: Not only did his new Cafe Rouge get high marks in the O.C., but a Patina will be opening in NYC, and former chefs and managers spider-crawl along the landscape opening new places around town almost daily.· Smith & Wollensky to be Bought by Patina Restaurant Group [Bloomberg]
Monday, February 26, 2007
Just when you think Joachim Splichal's Patina Restaurant Group is gorged, it pops another morsel in its mouth. It was announced today that the LA and NY-based group bought the Smith & Wollensky national steakhouse chain, which includes all restos except the ones in New York (Smith & Wollensky's CEO retains ownership of those, plus its partner brands). "When we bought ourselves back last year, our goal was to expand premium restaurants on both coasts," Splichal told Eater LA. For now, the chain will remain as it is, no fancy steakhouse additions or classic Splichal French aesthetics will be brought in…yet. "This is our first acquisition, and we'll evaluate it," he said. "It's a good brand in good locations with good revenue. Right now we want it to stay the same." The group plans to take the S&W brand worldwide.
Splichal and the Patina Group are working on several other local projects (natch), like turning the shuttered Maple Drive into a "contemporary, hip" seafood restaurant. Clive Wilkinson Architects has been tapped to do the design; the firm made Google's Silicon Valley headquarters one of the coolest---as in "we're adults but can we please have an office like a playground"---offices on the planet. Splichal said the yet unnamed resto will open in late September or early October. The Splichal culinary seed empire keeps spreading: Not only did his new Cafe Rouge get high marks in the O.C., but a Patina will be opening in NYC, and former chefs and managers spider-crawl along the landscape opening new places around town almost daily.· Smith & Wollensky to be Bought by Patina Restaurant Group [Bloomberg]
Julia's Grows Up, SF Chronicle July 18, 2004
Julia's Grows Up New chef, decor bring distinction to COPIA eaterySan Francisco
ChronicleSunday, July 18, 2004
Julia's Kitchen -- the restaurant in Copia, the American Center for Food, Wine & the Arts -- has spent much of the past couple of years deciding what it wants to be.
About a year ago, the Patina Group took over management of the restaurant and things began to change. They carpeted the concrete floor and added sheer drapes to the wall of windows overlooking the impressive garden and patio, which is shaded by 80-year-old olive trees.
The harsh, tinny sounds that detracted from the dining experience have been muffled, and the annoying barked orders coming from the open stainless- steel canopied kitchen have also been quelled. Even though the indoor-outdoor brushed aluminum chairs remain in the dining room and are too casual for the other elements, the overall improvement is significant. The 75-seat dining room is still somewhat institutional, but now it feels like a restaurant rather than a museum cafe.
The most important change, however, was the addition of Victor Scargle as chef. A Chronicle Rising Star in 2000, Scargle has headed the kitchens of Pisces in Burlingame and Jardiniere in San Francisco. At his last position, Grand Cafe in San Francisco, the menu seemed too casual for his refined style, but at Copia he's found his niche and is cooking better than ever.
It's an idyllic setting for a chef of his caliber. Many of the herbs, salad greens and vegetables come from the 3 1/2-acre garden just beyond the 35- seat patio. On nice days, guests can dine outdoors -- one of the best places to have a white-tablecloth meal while luxuriating in the warm Napa climate. If ever there was a restaurant that connects diners to the land, this is it.
Scargle's take on sweetbreads ($13) alone would draw me back. They're sauteed to a dry crispness and set on a bed of mushrooms seasoned with tiny chunks of crisp pork belly, preserved lemon and dots of port reduction.
It's a masterful combination, followed closely by pan-seared halibut ($21) with artichokes, morels and a thick, bright green herb sauce. The menu changes often; currently, Scargle is poaching the halibut in olive oil and pairing the fish with summer bean ragout, fingerling potatoes and verjus, a deliciously tart underripe grape juice. He also works magic on petrale sole rolled into tight medallions ($21), and local sand dabs ($21) set on celery root puree with lemon-caper brown butter.
I've never been partial to lobster -- to me it's one of the most over- rated luxury ingredients -- but Scargle tempts me to change my mind. He drapes a half tail and one claw ($22) over creamy, slightly chewy risotto flavored with carrots and dots of English peas, then surrounds the mound with a sauce that echoes the dominant flavors; the interplay of seafood and sweet root vegetable is brilliant.
Grilled rib-eye steak ($27) is so rich that the marbled fat seems to permeate every bite, much like an unctuous sauce. The slices are fanned over fairly insipid blue cheese potato gratin and intensely flavored spinach. The spinach has a marvelous iron edge that works miraculously to clean up the palate, helping to make each bite of steak taste like the first. Scargle's pork chop ($21) also makes a diner sit up and take note -- part of the meat is sliced and fanned around a compact mound of chard and a crisp, tart shell filled with a stewy blend of sweet onions.
Many starters highlight the bounty of the garden, from a simple house salad with confit of baby carrots, radishes and verjus vinaigrette ($10) to pan-seared foie gras ($14). The sear is so perfect that the oval lobe looks as if it were done in a waffle iron. It's set on a pedestal of crisp brioche filled with blueberries and Mexican tarragon, which has intense licorice underpinnings.
One of my favorite starters is the hot duck confit ($12) served with cool mache, arugula, Bing cherries and garden stevia, a plant whose leaves are 200 to 300 times sweeter than sucrose. Used with restraint, it acts like salt, making the other flavors bloom.
In the custom of other high-end restaurants, Scargle sends out amuse bouches, little tastes to occupy guests between courses. It might be a demitasse of watercress and cucumber soup from the garden, a small quenelle of chopped salmon or a perfect poached shrimp on fine threads of crunchy vegetables. Sometimes an intermezzo arrives before dessert; on a couple of visits it was vanilla sorbet with watermelon soup, a sensational combination.
Sweetening the quite reasonable check at the end of the meal, the kitchen sends out shot glasses of fruit seltzer and bite-size housemade truffles and confections. These extras make guests feel pampered, something increasingly rare these days.
To help lure locals, Julia's Kitchen also features a three-course menu for $29 every Thursday night, with choices in each category. The chef also prepares a nightly six-course tasting menu for $60 and four-course lunch menu for $40. Along with the regular menus, patrons can also choose from an impressive shellfish menu that includes at least a half-dozen types of oysters.
At dessert, Nicole Plue proves once again why she's among the best pastry chefs in the Bay Area. She, too, was a Chronicle Rising Star, selected in 1997 when she worked at Hawthorne Lane. She left the Bay Area for several years, wowing diners in New York at such places as Eleven Madison Park and creating recipes for Martha Stewart Living. Now she's back here, concocting sweets that engage all the senses.
Her made-to-order roasted apricot tart ($14) features a caramelized top that flirts on the edge of bitterness, with a rich dark vanilla caramel topping and smooth creme fraiche ice cream that cools the palate and breaks the rhythm of flavors.
The cool butterscotch pot de creme ($8) is topped with a sprinkle of salty pecans. If you ever wonder about the role of salt in dessert, this will explain it. A bite of pudding alone is soothing and sweet, but adding a nut lights up the flavors like fireworks in explosions of sweet, buttery, creamy caramel. The pot cream is served with a warm cherry-pecan brioche set on a thick puddle of pecan cream. But as good as this dessert is, my favorite is still the peanut gianduja ($8), a slim brick of chocolate that tastes like an ethereal Reese's peanut butter cup with crunch.
Service, like the food and the interior, has been refined during the past year. The staff is understated and professional. Waiters are friendly, but not too familiar. They know the menu and perform the mundane tasks like bringing silverware and pouring wine with military efficiency, but never in a ham- handed way.
In fact, if you haven't been to Julia's Kitchen in the past year, you'll find just about everything about the place has changed. It's exciting to see a restaurant perform such a miraculous turnaround. What a difference a year makes.
Lots to Like on Julia's Wine List Julia's Kitchen wine list declares that Copia isn't just about American food and wine. While California dominates the 100-plus offerings, there are representatives from Spain, New Zealand, Australia, Italy and France.
In addition, the restaurant makes it easy for people to try new things because the pricing is so reasonable; most bottles are basically double retail cost. It's a list that promotes the consumption and enjoyment of wine.
There's a concerted effort to offer something for everyone. Those into cult wines will find the 1998 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon ($850) and the 1999 Araujo "Eisele Vineyard'' Cabernet Sauvignon ($250), for example.
Because a lot of business is done at lunch, the restaurant offers 18 wines by the glass, priced from $5 to $14. There are also 14 half bottles, including 2002 Selene Hyde Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc ($21) and 2001 Shafer Napa Valley Merlot ($35). There are also continually changing red and white wine flights, such as "Taste of Oregon,'' featuring a Riesling, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay ($12) or a Gamay Noir, Pinot Noir and Syrah ($15).
If you want to bring your own wine, corkage is $15.
—M.B.Michael Bauer is The Chronicle's restaurant critic.
ChronicleSunday, July 18, 2004
Julia's Kitchen -- the restaurant in Copia, the American Center for Food, Wine & the Arts -- has spent much of the past couple of years deciding what it wants to be.
About a year ago, the Patina Group took over management of the restaurant and things began to change. They carpeted the concrete floor and added sheer drapes to the wall of windows overlooking the impressive garden and patio, which is shaded by 80-year-old olive trees.
The harsh, tinny sounds that detracted from the dining experience have been muffled, and the annoying barked orders coming from the open stainless- steel canopied kitchen have also been quelled. Even though the indoor-outdoor brushed aluminum chairs remain in the dining room and are too casual for the other elements, the overall improvement is significant. The 75-seat dining room is still somewhat institutional, but now it feels like a restaurant rather than a museum cafe.
The most important change, however, was the addition of Victor Scargle as chef. A Chronicle Rising Star in 2000, Scargle has headed the kitchens of Pisces in Burlingame and Jardiniere in San Francisco. At his last position, Grand Cafe in San Francisco, the menu seemed too casual for his refined style, but at Copia he's found his niche and is cooking better than ever.
It's an idyllic setting for a chef of his caliber. Many of the herbs, salad greens and vegetables come from the 3 1/2-acre garden just beyond the 35- seat patio. On nice days, guests can dine outdoors -- one of the best places to have a white-tablecloth meal while luxuriating in the warm Napa climate. If ever there was a restaurant that connects diners to the land, this is it.
Scargle's take on sweetbreads ($13) alone would draw me back. They're sauteed to a dry crispness and set on a bed of mushrooms seasoned with tiny chunks of crisp pork belly, preserved lemon and dots of port reduction.
It's a masterful combination, followed closely by pan-seared halibut ($21) with artichokes, morels and a thick, bright green herb sauce. The menu changes often; currently, Scargle is poaching the halibut in olive oil and pairing the fish with summer bean ragout, fingerling potatoes and verjus, a deliciously tart underripe grape juice. He also works magic on petrale sole rolled into tight medallions ($21), and local sand dabs ($21) set on celery root puree with lemon-caper brown butter.
I've never been partial to lobster -- to me it's one of the most over- rated luxury ingredients -- but Scargle tempts me to change my mind. He drapes a half tail and one claw ($22) over creamy, slightly chewy risotto flavored with carrots and dots of English peas, then surrounds the mound with a sauce that echoes the dominant flavors; the interplay of seafood and sweet root vegetable is brilliant.
Grilled rib-eye steak ($27) is so rich that the marbled fat seems to permeate every bite, much like an unctuous sauce. The slices are fanned over fairly insipid blue cheese potato gratin and intensely flavored spinach. The spinach has a marvelous iron edge that works miraculously to clean up the palate, helping to make each bite of steak taste like the first. Scargle's pork chop ($21) also makes a diner sit up and take note -- part of the meat is sliced and fanned around a compact mound of chard and a crisp, tart shell filled with a stewy blend of sweet onions.
Many starters highlight the bounty of the garden, from a simple house salad with confit of baby carrots, radishes and verjus vinaigrette ($10) to pan-seared foie gras ($14). The sear is so perfect that the oval lobe looks as if it were done in a waffle iron. It's set on a pedestal of crisp brioche filled with blueberries and Mexican tarragon, which has intense licorice underpinnings.
One of my favorite starters is the hot duck confit ($12) served with cool mache, arugula, Bing cherries and garden stevia, a plant whose leaves are 200 to 300 times sweeter than sucrose. Used with restraint, it acts like salt, making the other flavors bloom.
In the custom of other high-end restaurants, Scargle sends out amuse bouches, little tastes to occupy guests between courses. It might be a demitasse of watercress and cucumber soup from the garden, a small quenelle of chopped salmon or a perfect poached shrimp on fine threads of crunchy vegetables. Sometimes an intermezzo arrives before dessert; on a couple of visits it was vanilla sorbet with watermelon soup, a sensational combination.
Sweetening the quite reasonable check at the end of the meal, the kitchen sends out shot glasses of fruit seltzer and bite-size housemade truffles and confections. These extras make guests feel pampered, something increasingly rare these days.
To help lure locals, Julia's Kitchen also features a three-course menu for $29 every Thursday night, with choices in each category. The chef also prepares a nightly six-course tasting menu for $60 and four-course lunch menu for $40. Along with the regular menus, patrons can also choose from an impressive shellfish menu that includes at least a half-dozen types of oysters.
At dessert, Nicole Plue proves once again why she's among the best pastry chefs in the Bay Area. She, too, was a Chronicle Rising Star, selected in 1997 when she worked at Hawthorne Lane. She left the Bay Area for several years, wowing diners in New York at such places as Eleven Madison Park and creating recipes for Martha Stewart Living. Now she's back here, concocting sweets that engage all the senses.
Her made-to-order roasted apricot tart ($14) features a caramelized top that flirts on the edge of bitterness, with a rich dark vanilla caramel topping and smooth creme fraiche ice cream that cools the palate and breaks the rhythm of flavors.
The cool butterscotch pot de creme ($8) is topped with a sprinkle of salty pecans. If you ever wonder about the role of salt in dessert, this will explain it. A bite of pudding alone is soothing and sweet, but adding a nut lights up the flavors like fireworks in explosions of sweet, buttery, creamy caramel. The pot cream is served with a warm cherry-pecan brioche set on a thick puddle of pecan cream. But as good as this dessert is, my favorite is still the peanut gianduja ($8), a slim brick of chocolate that tastes like an ethereal Reese's peanut butter cup with crunch.
Service, like the food and the interior, has been refined during the past year. The staff is understated and professional. Waiters are friendly, but not too familiar. They know the menu and perform the mundane tasks like bringing silverware and pouring wine with military efficiency, but never in a ham- handed way.
In fact, if you haven't been to Julia's Kitchen in the past year, you'll find just about everything about the place has changed. It's exciting to see a restaurant perform such a miraculous turnaround. What a difference a year makes.
Lots to Like on Julia's Wine List Julia's Kitchen wine list declares that Copia isn't just about American food and wine. While California dominates the 100-plus offerings, there are representatives from Spain, New Zealand, Australia, Italy and France.
In addition, the restaurant makes it easy for people to try new things because the pricing is so reasonable; most bottles are basically double retail cost. It's a list that promotes the consumption and enjoyment of wine.
There's a concerted effort to offer something for everyone. Those into cult wines will find the 1998 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon ($850) and the 1999 Araujo "Eisele Vineyard'' Cabernet Sauvignon ($250), for example.
Because a lot of business is done at lunch, the restaurant offers 18 wines by the glass, priced from $5 to $14. There are also 14 half bottles, including 2002 Selene Hyde Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc ($21) and 2001 Shafer Napa Valley Merlot ($35). There are also continually changing red and white wine flights, such as "Taste of Oregon,'' featuring a Riesling, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay ($12) or a Gamay Noir, Pinot Noir and Syrah ($15).
If you want to bring your own wine, corkage is $15.
—M.B.Michael Bauer is The Chronicle's restaurant critic.
Los Angeles Magazine, March 2004
Shine OnPatina has lost none of its luster in the move to Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Magazine, March 2004 issue
PATINA HAS NO PATINA. It is as clean and uncluttered as a Clinique counter. It has abandoned its snug spot on a strip of Melrose that included a "pawnbroker to the stars," a self-service car wash, and a storefront church for the sweeping polished steel of Disney Hall.
The surprise announcement that Patina would relocate did not surprise many who follow restaurants in L.A. It seemed, in fact, to be preordained. In 1989, Joachim and Christine Splichal took over the old Le Saint-Garmain site on the corner of Cole and opened their first restaurant. Very little of L.A. reached the original Patina's boxy interior. Elegant and uncompromising, it conceded nothing to the city's casual ethos. With Christine's graciousness in the front of the house and Joachim's perfectionism in the back, Patina in the early '90s was the best restaurant in L.A. In 1992, the couple opened its initial satellite, the less expensive Pinot Bistro in Studio City, and embarked on a path of continuous expansion. Now a part of Restaurant Associates, the group's holdings stretch from Napa to Orange County, include seven spin-off Pinot restaurants, thrive in cultural institutions from LACMA to the Hollywood Bowl and in family destinations such as Downtown Disney in Anaheim, and dominate downtown dining with Nick & Stef's Steakhouse, Zucca Ristorante, Cafe Pinot, Patinette at MOCA, and Pinot Grill and Kendall's Brasserie at the Music Center.
What looks like the graph of success in the boardroom can appear to be the stairwell to impersonality in the dining room. With each opening, with each pizzeria and museum cafe that the company has rolled out, the image of who Joachim Splichal is has become less and less clear. Moving the mother ship itself to the downtown core represents a moment of truth for Patina. If the restaurant is to be thought of as more than the fully loaded version of its Pinot line of bistros, the public must become reacquainted with Joachim Splichal. No, not the Clausewitz of Figueroa we have come to know, that strategist who can open any eating venue on budget and on time, but the man who predates that incarnation: Joachim Splichal, the cook.
On first approach, as one turns down Grand Avenue, the restaurant looks dispiritingly institutional. A long line of orange cones directs cars to the valet parkers, then a swath of pavement must be traversed to reach the restaurant's door. Inside is a bar with a few stools and shelved bottles of aged brandy. Behind the hostess's podium lies the entrance to the dining room. One gets the feeling that designer Hagy Belzberg, who also renovated the Melrose location in 2000, has had to work with an area that was pretty much set. You don't just blow out a wall on a Gehry blueprint. So the restaurant's main artery is a crowded track that hugs a wall, is littered with side tables for the waiters to use, and is as packed with people crossing paths as an alley in a Marrakech souk. Only when you sit down do you get a sense of the room's elegant proportion and notice the restaurant's most significant design feature: the walnut paneling that had been laser cut to look like a slightly gathered theatrical curtain. It casts majesty on the room and hints at the personal statement the restaurant is envisaged to be. For the ancestral associations of the paneling's dark tones, juxtaposed with the building's pristine modernism, would represent a seductive pairing to any cultured German.
ONE WOULDN'T want to overstate the point with talk of crescendos and symphonic passages, but there is a musicality to the work of great cooks. They have their own key, a quality that is greater than the sum of ingredients; it is what makes a dish theirs. Joachim Splichal is a son of Swabia, the southwest corner pocket of Germany where the Danube rises, and his cooking has a serene lushness that, whatever it owes to France in technique, is central European at heart. His is a refined ease that is always alert to the rustic note. In music you hear this same combination in violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter's recent recording of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, in which by turns she is convert-hall virtuoso and village fiddler. Theo Schoenegger, the chef whom Splichal has chosen to head the kitchen, is someone completely alive to that sense of Mitteleuropa. He spent three years at Munich's famed Aubergine restaurant before moving to the United States and hails from the Alpine Trentino-Alto Adige, the northernmost province of Italy. It's a different country from Splichal's, but it's practically on the same latitude. These two could bond over a few heads of celery root and a case of parsnips. And they did.
I emphasize the Germanic angle because it is the connective tissue of Patina's menu, what gives cohesion and that special quality to any menu—a point of view. The chefs ignore it at their own risk. When they try to be Californian, as in the mandatory green salad, what results is the most pretentiously described ("seasonal vegetables, raw and braised, organic greens and herbs with a citrus vinaigrette"), most expensive($15), and dullest salad you are likely to encounter. But when they toy with the theme, matters get exciting. Yes, everyone must have an ahi tuna appetizer, but pairing the fish with a magnificent cream of celery gives the dish the snap of a Borsalino's brim. The chestnut bisque has an atavistic resonance—no ladled business here, just a liquid so pure, so intense, it offers a sense of place in a simple white bowl. White asparagus accompanies the sweetbreads, chestnut spaetzle comes with the loin of hare, apple-champagne sauerkraut sets off the pheasant, and a crescent of linzer dough crowns the caramelized apples served with milk and honey sorbet. The heart lifts at the sight of these ingredients on the same menu, a diner delights in their subtle perfection. It's the moment many of us thought would never happen and finally has. He doesn't offer knödel, but Herr Splichal has gotten sentimental.
Within this framework—which will undoubtedly shade toward the Mediterranean with the approach of spring—there are three important developments in the cooking. The first is a nervy delight in classic accents and preparations. Sometimes this is more successful than others. The little cheese puffs presented at the beginning of the meal in a skillfully folded napkin and the brandy cocktail sauce that accompanies the lobster salad with a heart of palm slaw radiate tradition. On the other hand, an offering like the frog legs served with gnocchi and a sweet pea sauce was a dish whose garlic pulse was so weak that before expiring it barely managed to gesture at the persillade it might have been.
The second development is what could be called a miniature monumentalism. There is a tendency among classically trained chefs to chop and slice until whatever gets placed on a plate is in its smallest possible form. This is due to the belief—actually the canon of haute cuisine—that in miniature lies elegance. Patina's menu resists that. The sweetbread in the appetizer is not separated into tiny morsels but is a juicy, chunky nugget that has been allowed a basic heft. The lobster in the risotto is thickly scalloped rather than rendered as some micro salpicon. These are what the French call noble ingredients, but even the modest, lightly breaded lunchtime skate wing that is served with horseradish-potato puree is permitted to have a grandeur all its own.
The third development involves a level of sauce making that is truly superior, which is not to imply that these are essences of essences reduced to spoon-coating consistency. Great sauces are the opposite, a means of adding facets to dishes that would otherwise be one-dimensional. Sometimes this requires a definite stress, a particularly strong ingredient that contrasts with a preparation and makes it memorable. I can still taste the gamy chocolate-based sauce that napped the loin of hare as well as the Madeira foam that set off the squab and radicchio risotto. At other times, however, sauces should be loosely constructed; these are the ones that offer the layers of flavor through which a restaurant is best perceived. The white sauce that came with the grilled turbot, truffled gnocchi, and chanterelles did it for me. I suspected it had been thickened with flour; not intent on its own self-expression, it let the flavor of the dish's other ingredients come through. Such nuanced technique, such a sense for food. By the time I was scraping my spoon along the bottom of the plate, I knew all my initial misgivings about the new Patina were unfounded. The restaurant deserved to be called Patina; it would not be better named Pinot Platinum.
BECAUSE IT IS attached to a concert hall, Patina had clearly demarked moods. During the early seating on concert nights, there is a marked attention to the matter at hand. A meal is not rushed, although diners and staff are aware of the eight o'clock curtain. As that hour approaches, the pace accelerates and the broad pavement outside becomes crowded. Here's a woman in an Astrkhan hat, here's another in a teal pashmina, and here—oh, blesses L.A. quirkiness—is a man come to hear Zubin Mehta conduct, stepping out of his black Rolls-Royce sporting spotless white special-occasion sneakers. By 8:30 the concert is on, and Patina, too is in grand waltz mode. A large party is being led to a central table, a food runner with a ponytail speeds through with steaming plates, a tall, dignified waiter explains each preparation, a côte de boeuf is being carved at one table, a two-tiered cheese trolley closes in on another. The busboys would have to burst into song for the scene to be more of a show.
Yet it is at lunch, when the people seated on the restaurant's terrace look across Grand Avenue at nothing more transporting than the Superior Court's parking structure, that I have felt the novelty of a downtown Patina wear off and the restaurant come into its own. Joachim Splichal's greatest risk is his greatest triumph. He had to gamble the loss of Patina's preeminent position for the significance of his accomplishment to become clear. No chef has ever seemed less interested in glad-handing a group of ten. Splichal's has been a different mission, and it has always focused on the broader public. He stuck to a path of expansion and took it as far as it could be taken, all the way until the opportunities presented by a restaurant empire transformed the very restaurant on which the empire was based. No bailing out at the end. No choking at the thought that high volume could alter Patina. It can. It did.
Patina is that rare thing, an exalted establishment that also manages to be fun. It's as if proximity to a place of live music has both brightened the dining experience and lightened the step of those who cross the threshold. Here, sommelier Eric Espuny can guide you to a fairly priced and stunning Santenay from Vincent Girardin, master fromager Andrew Steiner can crack you up ("That'll be five bucks," he might say to someone who breathes in too deeply when he passes with the cheese cart), and manager Patrick Davila can disarm you with an easy charm. With a location in an institution that for years to come will define L.A., Joachim Splichal has at last achieved what he always seemed determined to do. He has shorn his best restaurant of genteel airs. He has stared down three centuries of expectations of what the fine dining experience should be and fashioned something brilliant, thrilling, and wholly new.
—Patric Kuh
Los Angeles Magazine, March 2004 issue
PATINA HAS NO PATINA. It is as clean and uncluttered as a Clinique counter. It has abandoned its snug spot on a strip of Melrose that included a "pawnbroker to the stars," a self-service car wash, and a storefront church for the sweeping polished steel of Disney Hall.
The surprise announcement that Patina would relocate did not surprise many who follow restaurants in L.A. It seemed, in fact, to be preordained. In 1989, Joachim and Christine Splichal took over the old Le Saint-Garmain site on the corner of Cole and opened their first restaurant. Very little of L.A. reached the original Patina's boxy interior. Elegant and uncompromising, it conceded nothing to the city's casual ethos. With Christine's graciousness in the front of the house and Joachim's perfectionism in the back, Patina in the early '90s was the best restaurant in L.A. In 1992, the couple opened its initial satellite, the less expensive Pinot Bistro in Studio City, and embarked on a path of continuous expansion. Now a part of Restaurant Associates, the group's holdings stretch from Napa to Orange County, include seven spin-off Pinot restaurants, thrive in cultural institutions from LACMA to the Hollywood Bowl and in family destinations such as Downtown Disney in Anaheim, and dominate downtown dining with Nick & Stef's Steakhouse, Zucca Ristorante, Cafe Pinot, Patinette at MOCA, and Pinot Grill and Kendall's Brasserie at the Music Center.
What looks like the graph of success in the boardroom can appear to be the stairwell to impersonality in the dining room. With each opening, with each pizzeria and museum cafe that the company has rolled out, the image of who Joachim Splichal is has become less and less clear. Moving the mother ship itself to the downtown core represents a moment of truth for Patina. If the restaurant is to be thought of as more than the fully loaded version of its Pinot line of bistros, the public must become reacquainted with Joachim Splichal. No, not the Clausewitz of Figueroa we have come to know, that strategist who can open any eating venue on budget and on time, but the man who predates that incarnation: Joachim Splichal, the cook.
On first approach, as one turns down Grand Avenue, the restaurant looks dispiritingly institutional. A long line of orange cones directs cars to the valet parkers, then a swath of pavement must be traversed to reach the restaurant's door. Inside is a bar with a few stools and shelved bottles of aged brandy. Behind the hostess's podium lies the entrance to the dining room. One gets the feeling that designer Hagy Belzberg, who also renovated the Melrose location in 2000, has had to work with an area that was pretty much set. You don't just blow out a wall on a Gehry blueprint. So the restaurant's main artery is a crowded track that hugs a wall, is littered with side tables for the waiters to use, and is as packed with people crossing paths as an alley in a Marrakech souk. Only when you sit down do you get a sense of the room's elegant proportion and notice the restaurant's most significant design feature: the walnut paneling that had been laser cut to look like a slightly gathered theatrical curtain. It casts majesty on the room and hints at the personal statement the restaurant is envisaged to be. For the ancestral associations of the paneling's dark tones, juxtaposed with the building's pristine modernism, would represent a seductive pairing to any cultured German.
ONE WOULDN'T want to overstate the point with talk of crescendos and symphonic passages, but there is a musicality to the work of great cooks. They have their own key, a quality that is greater than the sum of ingredients; it is what makes a dish theirs. Joachim Splichal is a son of Swabia, the southwest corner pocket of Germany where the Danube rises, and his cooking has a serene lushness that, whatever it owes to France in technique, is central European at heart. His is a refined ease that is always alert to the rustic note. In music you hear this same combination in violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter's recent recording of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, in which by turns she is convert-hall virtuoso and village fiddler. Theo Schoenegger, the chef whom Splichal has chosen to head the kitchen, is someone completely alive to that sense of Mitteleuropa. He spent three years at Munich's famed Aubergine restaurant before moving to the United States and hails from the Alpine Trentino-Alto Adige, the northernmost province of Italy. It's a different country from Splichal's, but it's practically on the same latitude. These two could bond over a few heads of celery root and a case of parsnips. And they did.
I emphasize the Germanic angle because it is the connective tissue of Patina's menu, what gives cohesion and that special quality to any menu—a point of view. The chefs ignore it at their own risk. When they try to be Californian, as in the mandatory green salad, what results is the most pretentiously described ("seasonal vegetables, raw and braised, organic greens and herbs with a citrus vinaigrette"), most expensive($15), and dullest salad you are likely to encounter. But when they toy with the theme, matters get exciting. Yes, everyone must have an ahi tuna appetizer, but pairing the fish with a magnificent cream of celery gives the dish the snap of a Borsalino's brim. The chestnut bisque has an atavistic resonance—no ladled business here, just a liquid so pure, so intense, it offers a sense of place in a simple white bowl. White asparagus accompanies the sweetbreads, chestnut spaetzle comes with the loin of hare, apple-champagne sauerkraut sets off the pheasant, and a crescent of linzer dough crowns the caramelized apples served with milk and honey sorbet. The heart lifts at the sight of these ingredients on the same menu, a diner delights in their subtle perfection. It's the moment many of us thought would never happen and finally has. He doesn't offer knödel, but Herr Splichal has gotten sentimental.
Within this framework—which will undoubtedly shade toward the Mediterranean with the approach of spring—there are three important developments in the cooking. The first is a nervy delight in classic accents and preparations. Sometimes this is more successful than others. The little cheese puffs presented at the beginning of the meal in a skillfully folded napkin and the brandy cocktail sauce that accompanies the lobster salad with a heart of palm slaw radiate tradition. On the other hand, an offering like the frog legs served with gnocchi and a sweet pea sauce was a dish whose garlic pulse was so weak that before expiring it barely managed to gesture at the persillade it might have been.
The second development is what could be called a miniature monumentalism. There is a tendency among classically trained chefs to chop and slice until whatever gets placed on a plate is in its smallest possible form. This is due to the belief—actually the canon of haute cuisine—that in miniature lies elegance. Patina's menu resists that. The sweetbread in the appetizer is not separated into tiny morsels but is a juicy, chunky nugget that has been allowed a basic heft. The lobster in the risotto is thickly scalloped rather than rendered as some micro salpicon. These are what the French call noble ingredients, but even the modest, lightly breaded lunchtime skate wing that is served with horseradish-potato puree is permitted to have a grandeur all its own.
The third development involves a level of sauce making that is truly superior, which is not to imply that these are essences of essences reduced to spoon-coating consistency. Great sauces are the opposite, a means of adding facets to dishes that would otherwise be one-dimensional. Sometimes this requires a definite stress, a particularly strong ingredient that contrasts with a preparation and makes it memorable. I can still taste the gamy chocolate-based sauce that napped the loin of hare as well as the Madeira foam that set off the squab and radicchio risotto. At other times, however, sauces should be loosely constructed; these are the ones that offer the layers of flavor through which a restaurant is best perceived. The white sauce that came with the grilled turbot, truffled gnocchi, and chanterelles did it for me. I suspected it had been thickened with flour; not intent on its own self-expression, it let the flavor of the dish's other ingredients come through. Such nuanced technique, such a sense for food. By the time I was scraping my spoon along the bottom of the plate, I knew all my initial misgivings about the new Patina were unfounded. The restaurant deserved to be called Patina; it would not be better named Pinot Platinum.
BECAUSE IT IS attached to a concert hall, Patina had clearly demarked moods. During the early seating on concert nights, there is a marked attention to the matter at hand. A meal is not rushed, although diners and staff are aware of the eight o'clock curtain. As that hour approaches, the pace accelerates and the broad pavement outside becomes crowded. Here's a woman in an Astrkhan hat, here's another in a teal pashmina, and here—oh, blesses L.A. quirkiness—is a man come to hear Zubin Mehta conduct, stepping out of his black Rolls-Royce sporting spotless white special-occasion sneakers. By 8:30 the concert is on, and Patina, too is in grand waltz mode. A large party is being led to a central table, a food runner with a ponytail speeds through with steaming plates, a tall, dignified waiter explains each preparation, a côte de boeuf is being carved at one table, a two-tiered cheese trolley closes in on another. The busboys would have to burst into song for the scene to be more of a show.
Yet it is at lunch, when the people seated on the restaurant's terrace look across Grand Avenue at nothing more transporting than the Superior Court's parking structure, that I have felt the novelty of a downtown Patina wear off and the restaurant come into its own. Joachim Splichal's greatest risk is his greatest triumph. He had to gamble the loss of Patina's preeminent position for the significance of his accomplishment to become clear. No chef has ever seemed less interested in glad-handing a group of ten. Splichal's has been a different mission, and it has always focused on the broader public. He stuck to a path of expansion and took it as far as it could be taken, all the way until the opportunities presented by a restaurant empire transformed the very restaurant on which the empire was based. No bailing out at the end. No choking at the thought that high volume could alter Patina. It can. It did.
Patina is that rare thing, an exalted establishment that also manages to be fun. It's as if proximity to a place of live music has both brightened the dining experience and lightened the step of those who cross the threshold. Here, sommelier Eric Espuny can guide you to a fairly priced and stunning Santenay from Vincent Girardin, master fromager Andrew Steiner can crack you up ("That'll be five bucks," he might say to someone who breathes in too deeply when he passes with the cheese cart), and manager Patrick Davila can disarm you with an easy charm. With a location in an institution that for years to come will define L.A., Joachim Splichal has at last achieved what he always seemed determined to do. He has shorn his best restaurant of genteel airs. He has stared down three centuries of expectations of what the fine dining experience should be and fashioned something brilliant, thrilling, and wholly new.
—Patric Kuh
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Welcome to the Patina Restaurant Group Blog. This blog will compile the news and press releases for the Patina Group and Patina Restaurant Group.
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