Fame Bites goes inside the belly of the entertainment beast. We're dishing out where the celebrities are eating, what they're eating and who they're eating with. A celebrity in her own right, Suzanne Goin has her hands full this weekend. The James Beard Award-winning Los Angeles chef is feeding 1200 celebrities at Sunday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. Her menu includes:
Forget the beef, there’s no fowl in sight: Goin made some interesting menu choices for a crowd that has been famously known for its food peccadilloes. We caught up with her at Lucques, one of three restaurants she co-owns in Los Angeles. Jennifer Wolfe is the Supervising Producer of the CNN Entertainment Unit. She previously reported on the outing of Los Angeles Times food critic S. Irene Virbila. A good friend of mine from Atlanta is a former pastry chef turned attorney. Clancy and I frequently talk food. We also cook together and when it comes to the culture of the restaurant kitchen, I lean on her for guidance. As a hardened veteran, Clancy doesn’t blush at colorful language, so I was a bit surprised when she blanched at the “F” word. “Why?” I asked. “Because chefs HATE foodies!” she said emphatically. I thought that was a pretty strong assertion, “Really? Chefs hate foodies?” In a town obsessed with celebrity and publicity, there are a few well-known residents in Los Angeles who prefer their picture is never taken - Los Angeles Times food critic S. Irene Virbila is one. That professional anonymity ended Tuesday night when she and three others arrived at Red Medicine, a new Vietnamese restaurant in Beverly Hills. Virbila had her photo snapped and her party was turned away and refused service; a bitter pill to swallow for a restaurant critic. Red Medicine is the latest project from Umami Burger founder Adam Fleischman, Noah Ellis, previously of Michael Mina's restaurant group, and Chef Jordan Kahn, who counts stints with chefs Thomas Keller, Grant Achatz and Michael Mina on his résumé. So why would a brand new restaurant, with three high-profile partners, risk outing and angering the LA Times food critic, a fixture on the scene for the last 16 years? |
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