​If you love lamb more than, well, other very tasty farm animals, then you probably have someplace to be on Monday, Feb. 20, at 7:30 p.m. And no, we do not mean volunteering your services to the folks at Windrose Farm, although that's not a bad idea. Food GPS is presenting the first (hopefully of many) Lamb Showdown, featuring a six-course dinner prepared by three of the best chefs in town: Walter Manzke from upcoming République and Factory Baking Company will go up against Zach Pollack and Steve Samson, the chef-co-owners of Sotto.

Four of the said courses will feature American lamb, and the two desserts will showcase sheep's milk. Because you can't have a lamb showdown with, well, something else.

As diners, you'll get to vote on which chef creates the best disheswith "the boldest flavor, most originality and best presentation." The winning chef gets $500 "and of course greater glory." Of course.

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University Hospitals, Ireland Cancer Center

Chef Gino Angelini

​Chef/restaurateur Gino Angelini will open a new restaurant in the old Hamburger Hamlet space in West Hollywood.

The project doesn't have a name yet, but it's scheduled for a fall 2012 opening. The design is "rustic Tuscan farmhouse."

The lunch menu will feature artisan pizzas, pastas, salads and entrées, while the dinner menu will tend more toward the classic Italian cooking the chef is known for at Angelini Osteria.

Angelini's eatery will share space with an upcoming TBD Chinese restaurant. Both eateries are a partnership with Innovative Dining Group (IDG), the company behind brands such as BOA Steakhouse, Sushi Roku and Katana.

Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, young, wild and free.

​With their success at Border Grill and beyond, it's difficult to think of chefs and restaurateurs Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger as ever being scrappy young things, just starting out, with a kitchen so tiny it spilled over into their back alley. But they were, back in 1981 when they opened City Cafe on Melrose. And on Feb. 29, as they've done every Leap Year since 2000, they'll commemorate that time by serving a menu highlighting the flavors that launched their careers.

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Anne Fishbein

taco love at El Pique

​Valentine's Day is fast approaching, thus it is time to book reservations at your favorite swank restaurant. Assuming you have a date for the evening. If you do not, well, check back later for our Best Dive Bars in L.A. list.

Of course your significant other may not be the white tablecloth sort, so where to take him or her isn't nearly as straightforward as Providence or Michael's or Rivera. All this depends on many variables, not the least being the status of your bank account. Other things to think about: If your date is your spouse of 25 years and co-parent of your five kids, the beloved you're wanting to propose to with the arrival of the mignardise, or just somebody you just met at a bar. So we've compiled a list of the 10 best romantic restaurants in L.A. that accounts for some of these variables.

It should go without saying that, if you can cook at all, staying home is a fine option. (No bouquet-carrying crowds! No valet parking!) You could also get Sichuan to-go, rent a stack of Fellini movies and lock the door, which is certainly cheaper -- and exactly as romantic as you make it. And, finally, there is the caveat that your local taco truck is possibly the best choice of all: close to home, with your car handy for making out, and you save the cash for that trip to Prague. But then, some of us are cheap dates. Turn the page.

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S. Park

tea and Algerian almond cigars at Cafe Livre

​Don't wear your lacy picture hat, and don't even think about elegantly extending your pinkie as you hold a cup of tea at Café Livre.

"We want to make tea service more casual and fun, take it out of the parlor," says Susan Park, director of operations at the cafe, which has just opened its Siptea and Algerian Coffee Garden. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Instead of cucumber sandwiches and scones with clotted cream, there are Algerian almond pastries, reflecting executive chef Farid Zadi's Algerian heritage. These include Algerian almond cigars, which are crisp rolled pastries filled with almond sugar, brushed with clarified butter, baked and arranged on a plate with citrus syrup.

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​Ah, you know the drill. Set your alarm for X minutes before the reservation lines open (caffeine, Prozac). If you're successful, go off to dream your foie gras cupcake dreams. If you are not, start tweeting Krissy offers of free babysitting. Then get ready to put on your Ludo groupie t-shirt and charge the batteries of your cell phone, digital camera, iPad (substitute social media gizmo of choice) and Mapquest the location of the next incarnation of Ludo Lefebvre's fabulously successful pop-up restaurant, in this case LudoBites 8 (yes, 8).

This installation of the food-as-temporary-art-installation will take place at Lemon Moon, the Westside restaurant from Melisse's Josiah Citrin and Raphael Lunetta of Jiraffe ("Maybe Ludo can convince them to join him in the kitchen one night," said Krissy Lefebvre via email). LudoBites 8 will run from Jan. 18 through Feb. 22, with a fair number of days off in between. The menu isn't set yet (this surprises you?), and there will be a limited wine list by Domaine L.A., of five whites and five reds by the bottle and one white and one red by the carafe. Corkage is $18. Ludo says that the menu will be set by January 18th at 6 p.m. Probably watch his Twitter feed.

And the reservation methodology?

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D. Solomon

Bäco Mercat's pound cake

​Josef Centeno has had his plate full since his new restaurant, Bäco Mercat, opened its doors in early November. Good thing it's only half a mile from the Lazy Ox Canteen where he continues as chef.

We recently found Centeno perched high on a ladder outside Bäco Mercat wielding a squeegee. It was his first day off in weeks, he said. "But I guess I'm still working," the chef-owner added with a shrug as he wiped another window clean.

There's a reason for Centeno's high spirits. "After a great soft opening, Bäco Mercat is happy to announce our grand opening," he tells us in an e-mail. The downtown L.A. restaurant is now open Monday through Saturday with expanded hours and is taking reservations.

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Anne Fishbein

MB Post interiors

​In which Jonathan Gold visits David LeFevre's MB Post in Manhattan Beach, the chef's first restaurant of his own after many years at Water Grill. Nearby ocean. Volleyball on the sand. Bacon cheddar buttermilk biscuits. In other words, a very good reason to make that drive.

The recession may be on, and everyone is on a diet, but you'd never know it on a Monday night elbow to elbow with people tearing into soft hunks of braised hog jowl glazed with dark, fish sauce-infused caramel, crisp-skinned pork meatballs that explode with the flavor of aniseed, or slices of grilled skirt steak draped over a forest of grilled baby broccoli.

Read the complete story in Gold's Counter Intelligence, "Stylin' in South Bay," and check out Anne Fishbein's photo gallery. Then maybe get in your car.

A. Scattergood

Maison Giraud canelé

​If you're the sort of person who dreams about pain au chocolat (see: 99 Things To Eat in L.A. Before You Die, 2010) and properly made canelés de Bordeaux (beeswax, copper molds), you may also have been peering through the picture windows yesterday morning at 7:30 when Alain Giraud opened his long-awaited Maison Giraud in the Pacific Palisades.

The restaurant -- which may or may not be French, and may nor not be a bistro or a brasserie but is definitely a restaurant -- started with breakfast yesterday and lunch today and definitely dinner on Monday, when it formally opens. The lovely open space was considerably reworked from its time as the Italian restaurant Dante, and how has 12 tables inside and 7 outside on the front patio. And there's a whole store next door -- you can see it through curiously medieval narrow vertical windows in the restaurant's dining room -- devoted to Catherine Giraud's gift shop Lavender Blue (French soap, linens, very cool stuff), which will also open on Monday.

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