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ALL-STAR
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It's just another busy Satarday night at Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi: At the banquette tables the Tom Hanks/ Rita Wilson family dines on sole and truffles while nearby Sylvester Stallone and Jennifer Flavin eat spigola, their favorite. Danny DeVito hosts a later candlelight dinner party for 22 in the private room. Regulars include Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Dennis Quaid, Diana and Paul Kessler, Steve Bochco and often Michael Ovitz on Sunday nights. Dame Edna flies in from London for the Cotoletta alla Milanese-breaded veal, a fluffy cloud on a white plate. Quincy Jones brings a group of extravagant music friends. Groups of good looking girls enter, clad in jeans and flimsy tops. They stand conspicuously smoking under the awning. Yoga gossip and laughter. Giorgio packs the kind of power that publicists dream of, yet Giorgio Baldi, the 54-year old Tuscan owner, foregoes all the trappings of a mega L.A. restaurant. There are no Food Network contracts, no publicists, no hype. Nor are there any plans for expansion, cookbooks or Las Vegas outposts— just honest home cooking in the Santa Monica Canyon. Guests saunter into the small dining room wearing sweats and order from more than 300 Italian wines on the menu, forking out $400 for two during truffle season. Deals are quietly made over carpaccio with white truffle sauce and delicate lagostine. |
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secret, of course, is Giorgio and his family: "We like the custom
cooking. We love our customers," says Giorgio. In the old days, Wolfgang
Puck cooked like this at Ma Maison for Patrick Terrail. Puck then began
his journey alone with Spago and an Oscar party for Swifty Lazar, and
worldwide fame and fortune followed. He expanded to airports, Disneyland
and Vegas (and often cooking for charity). He still cooks for his special
clients, but now there are thousands if not millions of them.
The Giorgio Baldi family is different. They cook with the seasons. Their hungry clients come in with family and friends to eat at simply the best tables in town, small with white linen and green chairs. No flowers. Giorgio gives no interviews and fiercely protects his Channel Road empire. This food has been cooked and served by the Baldi family— the tousled grey-haired Giorgio, wife Roberta and children Elena and Edoardo— for 13 years. Edoardo went to Pali high and learned desserts in Tuscany. Now 27, Edoardo is manager and sous chef. Giorgio first opened his Santa Monica restaurant in 1990. After four years, he opened Giorgio Malibu, and it quickly became the mainstay of the Malibu Colony crowd. In 1997, when President Bill dined with David Geffen at 5PM, it was Giorgio Baldi who planned the menu and cranked up the kitchens for an early dinner. |
Weather was too tricky to keep the Malibu restaurant in full swing, however, so after five years of dealing with mud slides, that trattoria closed and he focused on the gold mine hole-in-the-wall on the PCH. And now, after 13 years in business, Giorgio's is an institution: a simple trattoria where, despite the clientele, great food is still the star. Seafood such as spigola and branzini is flown in daily from Italy. Ravioli is made of very thin dough. White truffles arrive fresh form the Piemonte region every fall. Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart, Sean Penn, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Fiona Lewis, Art Linson, Chuck and Katie Arnoldi all feast in this tiny place as if it were their second kitchen. And while Giorgio spoils one and all, whetting their appetites for more, his real focus is never for a moment away from the food. So even while Katie Arnoldi talks to producer Art Linson about the movie of her body building book, Giorgio concentrates on making another wonderful creamy risotto topped with porcini or truffles. |
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