As if Brentwood isn't home to enough Italian restaurants within a five-block radius, Spumoni Italian Cafe & Pizzeria opens February 15th, located next door to Osteria Latini on San Vicente Boulevard. Also on the block is La Scala and Pizzicotto. And a bit further down the street you can find Sor Tino Ristorante, Toscana (where you can expect celebrity sightings and higher prices), and Pecorino--to name a few. To set Spumoni apart from the crowd, the restaurant offers a full-page list of gnocchi dishes, labeled "gnocchi bar" on the menu, (ranging from $12.95-$16.95). And for dessert, to replace the fallen Cold Stone Creamery, check out the latest addition to the quickly expanding Pinkberry spinoff, Yogurtland, just next door to Susie Cakes. It opens this spring.

Celia Soudry

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Spumoni Cafe: 1714 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles.

Barbara Hansen

Chef Kerry Simon

​Kerry Simon will be hopping across town when his new restaurant, LA Market, opens February 15th at LA Live in downtown Los Angeles.

That's not too far from his other place, Simon L.A., in the Sofitel at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega. But it's a long way from home base in Las Vegas, where he has two more places, Simon Restaurant and Lounge in Palms Place and the CatHouse, an ultra-lounge and restaurant at Luxor Hotel and Casino.

The new venue won't be like any of these. "Downtown is its own little world. There's a whole different vibe there," Simon says. He plans to make LA Market "really approachable and work the market into it," that is, the Santa Monica Farmers Market, which is one of his haunts.

A quick walk around the second level of Paseo Colorado's east wing reveals virtual tumbleweeds blowing through the newly-emptied retail and restaurant spaces. Within the last few months, three businesses have hit the dust: D'Vine Wine, a make-your-own-wine shop, Pasadena Jazz Institute, a non-profit music instruction facility, and Paseo Cantina, a Mexican-themed restaurant.

Clare Kleinedler

A peek inside the now-empty Paseo Cantina

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People don't want to throw away food. It just happens, especially combined with the good fortune that our local climate provides when it comes to produce. Forage, a brand new restaurant in the former Town & Country space on Sunset near Hyperion, gives folks with excess fruits and veggies a place to share, and then see their homegrown harvest turned into something they'll be proud of. It's the next logical, professionalized step in a certain pro-food, anti-waste movement that's been gaining ground around Los Angeles.

Chef Jason Kim honed his technique at L.A.'s famed L'Orangerie, and then gained a true appreciation of seasonal cooking at Lucques, where Suzanne Goin would trust him to pick out the best of the farmers' markets. In his own venture, Kim is putting faith in his customers to get involved and collaborate at a level not typical of a neighborhood restaurant, with a forage program that creatively uses technology and social networking to find what's out there. Or you can just give them a call, too.

Jessica Ritz

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It wasn't the first beer-soaked lie a drunkard ever told, but it's certainly one of the most enduring. As the story goes, two German nobelmen were drinking when one fell off his beer barrel. Rather than admit he was drunk, he insisted that a nearby billy goat (known as a "bock" in German) had charged him. Whether or not his compatriot bought the story, no one knows. But since then, bock has come to mean "strong lager" -- i.e. a beer so strong that, like a belligerent goat, it knocks you over.

The billy goat and all its attendant iconography was also the inspiration for Ryan Sweeney when conceiving his newest bar, The Surly Goat, which opens in West Hollywood on Monday after two months of delays. Sweeney and his Verdugo Bar co-owner Brandon Bradford have teamed up with Alen Aivazian and silent partner Adolfo Suaya of Osaka and BoHo (where Sweeney curates the beer list) to open a beer bar that offers popular craft beers alongside rare, hard-to-find brews for more erudite beer nerds. The walls are decorated with dozens of vintage and reproduced beer posters featuring goats.

Elina Shatkin

The Surly Goat's mascot and its beer menu

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Brooke Burton

Quinn Hatfield at Hatfield's

​If you don't read the blogs (or Twitter), you may be one of the few people unaware that Hatfield's opens tonight. Make that re-opens, as this will be the second incarnation of Quinn and Karen Hatfield's restaurant, which was previously located on Beverly Boulevard in the location that is now home to Mark Gold's Eva. The Melrose Avenue spot was previously Red Pearl Kitchen... and before that Meson G, and before that, Michel Richard's Citrus. We had a chance to observe Hatfield's first dress rehearsal on Friday and see just how far things had come.

It's been a long couple of weeks for the Hatfields' and their team. Just last week the restaurant passed its final health inspection. Thursday marked the first time the restaurant's stoves were turned on. It wasn't until three days ago that the kitchen staff gathered together for the first time to cook the dishes for a night of "mock service"--a practice run of the restaurant for a dining room peopled with 14 staff members.

Rick Bayless

​Over the last few months there have been a lot of rumblings about Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Top Chef Masters) coming to Los Angeles. So, from the chef's Twitter account, as Bayless runs his own Twitter feed, we have this:

@Rick_Bayless: The restaurant will be called Red O RT @kimmiberry: @Rick_Bayless Is it the Red Onion that you will be consulting? 6:09 PM Jan 30th from TweetDeck

@Rick_Bayless: I am consulting on a restaurant, but i dont own it RT @Susie_LA @Rick_Bayless Is it true you are opening restaurant in Los Angeles? 5:43 PM Jan 30th from Twittelator

And from the chef's assistant, Jen Fite, we have a further clarification, in a little more than 140 characters. Fite says that Bayless is consulting on Red O and has written the menu for the restaurant, which is slated to open on Melrose near Crescent Heights in March. While Bayless is "not really coming; we don't have anything to do with the concept, we're just doing the food," next week Red O's chef and sous chef are going to Frontera Grill, Bayless' Chicago restaurant, to train there for three weeks.

Chef Onil Chibas learned today that California's State Theatre, the Pasadena Playhouse, which adjoins Chibas' just-opened Elements Kitchen, will close after its February 7th performance. The theatre has long been plagued with financial troubles.

When Chibas decided last year to expand Elements Café a to a full-size restaurant, he knew the Playhouse faced difficulties. "But I had no idea it would come to this," he told us. "The Playhouse is such a cultural institution, we figured someone would step forward and they'd find a way to keep operating." They share the same landlord.

Felicia Friesema

Elements Kitchen's tomato tartare

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Talk of a Hollywood Whole Foods that had people buzzing a few years back eventually fizzled, but ground floor square footage at the brand new W Hollywood at Vine has other food businesses ready for action starting today next to the cleaned up Red Line station entrance.

Photo: Jessica Ritz

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@twoHatfields: YES! We just passed our final Health Department Inspection! Its looking like we will be able to open on Feb1st- Not taking reservations yet Tues 26 Jan 16:45 via UberTwitter

A. Scattergood

Quinn Hatfield's chair

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