Requiem for Granita

By JULIETTE ROSSANT GRANITA MALIBU MALIBU COLONY PLAZA 23725 WEST MALIBU RD., MALIBU, CA 90265 PH: 310-456-0488 FX: 310-456-8317 Granita, located in the Malibu Colony Plaza, is inspired by the flavors and colors of the Mediterranean. The restaurant features a uniquely beautiful space created by Barbara Lazaroff that utilizes soft diffused lighting, undulating curves, textured glass and custom-glazed tile to give the illusion of a three-dimensional watercolor. An underwater vision, Granita’s design includes the dramatic etched glass that creates private dining spaces, an elevated bar inlaid with semi-precious stones, a hand-crafted fireplace inset with tiles and stones, and a landscaped patio with a koi pond and waterfall sculpture. The menu by Chef Jennifer Naylor is a showcase of beauty and simplicity and marries Mediterranean cuisine with the fresh foods produced in California. Long a favorite among local residents, travelers and celebrities, Granita is the center of a Malibu experience. (from www.wolfgangpuck.com/rest/fine/granita) This is not a restaurant review: it is too late for that. Nor is it deja vu all over again: rather, it is Last Days of Haute Cuisine all over again. The Malibu Times is running the story this week. Even the James Beard Foundation has posted the news for October 2005 already. However, the news seeped into the press as early as last July, when The Los Angeles Times reported: Granita is closing at the end of September. 'We're finishing up the end of our lease,' says Jennifer Naylor, who has been executive chef at the Malibu restaurant for eight years. 'Wolfgang [Puck] and Barbara [Lazaroff] determined it was the right time to move on. It's been a really great 15-year run.' That is no way to remember Granita. Remember rather the LAT review by S. Irene Virbila: With its fabled waves, legions of surfers, buffed bodies, mansions and horse ranches, is it any wonder Malibu conjures up the Southern California coast at its most romantic? Or why Wolfgang Puck chose it as the setting for his splashiest restaurant back in 1991? Granita is named for Italy's refreshing ices, which melt on the tongue like snowflakes. The very word conjures up warm weather, balmy breezes and seaside pleasures. ...Barbara Lazaroff, Puck's wife and collaborator, decided to evoke waves, tide pools and creatures of the sea in her elaborate design. Using American crafts -- glass, ceramic, tiles, fabrics, mosaic -- she also makes reference to Malibu's bohemian side. Every surface is patterned in a kaleidoscope of colors. No write-up today, however, captures the big splash Granita made when it opened. This was Barbara Lazaroff's most elaborate restaurant endeavor, at once putting Granita on the map and pushing the Wolfgang Puck reputation up another notch, albeit setting it back on cash-in-hand. Still, it made "The LA List" in Wine Spectator: Harvey Steiman noted Barbara Lazaroff's "exuberant design for Granita." That was 1995: a decade later, the Food Network was still talking about its "Mediterranean colors and flavors." Gayot still calls Granita "Wolfgang Puck’s Spago-by-the-Sea" and again there is mention of Barbara's "exuberant undersea design," which together with Jennifer Naylor's Mediterranean cuisine makes for great fun. Los Angeles Magazine said: Puck's wife and business partner, Barbara Lazaroff, designed an interior that was meant to convince diners that they couldn't see the surface of the ocean because they were somehow below it. From a sea-foam-green exterior to ceramic shells affixed to walls to blown-glass lamps in the shape of sea creatures to aquariums with undulating jellyfish, not a fathom has been left unplumbed. People loved it -- and hated it, often both at once. Los Angeles Magazine continued, "At times the original glass and tile work has struck me as the testament to artisanal craftsmanship that Lazaroff intended. At others it skirts dangerously close to theme-restaurant decor." LA Weekly described Granita as "a kind of underwater fantasy, a fractured kaleidoscopic — almost psychedelic — vision of the ocean’s depths, all sea blues and greens, undulating lines and busy tilework, the carpet and terrazzo abstractions of waves. It’s a room that can make you either nostalgic for LSD — or grateful that you’re not presently tripping." The San Diego Metropolitan wrote, "Have you ever been to Café Spago or Granita? Yikes! My eyes are tired when I leave; there's too much to look at." And, like many, The New York Times seemed unable to make up its mind: "Wolfgang Puck's famed Granita is a glamourous - some call it garish - fantasy world of handmade tiles embedded with seashells, blown-glass lighting fixtures, and etched-glass panels with wavy edges, and its beachside location adds to the marine mood." Why, then, is Granita so important? Barbara Lazaroff will tell you that Granita represents a Los Angeles meeting of Restaurant and Art -- and many artists still proudly proclaim their contributions to the decor: Richard Bilow, Bryan Tedrick, and David Ruth among them. Primarily, however, Granita represents perhaps the splashiest statement made by one of the first and most successful super chef empires to date, and part of the first great phase of the current form of chef-owned restaurant empires, which ended on the West Coast with the LA riots and earthquake in the early 1990s. The glamour which Wolfgang Puck captured and leveraged into a restaurant empire back in the 1980s helped not just to put Los Angeles more firmly on the Food map of this country but also to prove the viability of the chef-owned restaurant empire model to other chefs. These days, the Puck-Lazaroff empire exudes a rather corporate feel, so the webpage for the soon-to-expire Granita may not be long for this world (even the virtual world). Here is what Puck websites still say today: WolfgangPuck.com: Granita in Malibu is Lazaroff’s dynamic and wildly unique abstract interpretation of the quality of light and sense of movement underwater. Her design is a fusion of various contemporary and classical components, interpreted into a highly defined, personal statement. A talented group of 120 of the finest American craftspeople including ceramic artists, hand-blown glass formulators, stone masons, glass etchers, metal craftsmen, wood workers, fabric painters and fine artists were gathered to realize the unique elements that comprise Granita’s visual signature. In 1991, Granita was selected for a cover study by Restaurant / Hotel Design magazine. This restaurant garnered her the design industry’s Platinum Circle Award for design. WolfgangPuckSoup.com: Granita, located in Malibu, opened in 1991, inspired by the colors and flavors of the Mediterranean, and mixing Wolfgang's interpretive classics from the south of France and Italy using local California ingredients. The works of more than 120 American artisans were used by Lazaroff in the creation of this unique award-winning setting near the Pacific. No doubt some grey suit will pull the plug on these and other references, rather than make a special online section for Granita, Eureka, ObaChine. Me, I'd have a nostalgia sectin, full of staff photos, architectural shots and plans -- a museum collection and tribute. Of course, design and decoration alone could not carry a restaurant's reputation in the age of chef-driven resturants, and Granita has seen its share of great chefs, under the watchful eye of super chef Wolfgang Puck. Lee Hefter made his name there. Jennifer Naylor has helmed the ship admirably for years. Of her food, LAT restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila has written: In the three years Naylor has been chef, her cooking has evolved from over-the-top California cuisine to a more confident and infinitely more appealing simplicity... In the best Spago tradition, thin-crusted pizzas baked in the wood-burning oven are inventive and delicious... Like Spago or Chinois on Main, two of Puck's top restaurants, Granita's kitchen gets to work with the best ingredients... The meats -- everything from roasted rack and saddle of lamb with grilled figs, double-cut pork chop to a prime New York Steak -- are top-notch. In fact, on Thursday nights, Naylor serves a special menu that, in effect, turns Granita into a steak and chop house. Save room for dessert. Out comes a raft of six sorbets stacked three and three... Most impressive, though, is a beguiling green pistachio napoleon stacked high like the tower of Pisa and layered with pistachio and gianduja (chocolate hazelnut) gelato. Appropriately, the one granita is an espresso that crowns a dark chocolate tower of coffee ice cream. Here is what Patric Kuh, author of Last Days of Haute Cuisine wrote about Granita for Los Angeles Magazine: A SPECTER IS HAUNTING THE land--invading menus, food style shots, and worst of all, restaurant plates. It's fake Mediterranean cooking. More about Martha Stewart than Marcel Pagnol, what it provides in gracious living it lacks in taste. Oh, it has all the right ingredients, but they are ever so genteelly used and their combination lacks the bracing lustiness that should mark the style. But at Granita in Malibu the cooking is not just an abstract concept meant to convey sophistication. It is as real as a freshly landed fish on a Sardinian dock. Chef Jennifer Naylor, 38, wields a head-snapping, anchovy-packed, olive-laden palette enveloped in a desert wind of North African spices. Still, even destination restaurants can stretch the limits, as Granita did. Patric Kuh saw Granita as an attempt to synthesize "a fundamental dichotomy: a place locals should be able to drop into and Angelenos should consider worth a 45-minute drive." In Super Chef, Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining's long-reigning head of Fine Dining, Tom Kaplan, explained the extra challenges that came with Granita, including "mudslides and road closures" (p. 21). Lackluster location, distance from major city, and seasonal tempests made business more challenging than any other of the Puck-Lazaroff restaurants: "You could have a Friday night where you had 250 reservations and then the rain comes and you lose the [whole] weekend," he said. Foremost, Granita served Spago's celebrity regulars at their Malibu homes, and many celebrity parties occurred there. For the tenth anniversary, 15 Minutes Magazine recorded: "CONGRATULATIONS to chef extraordinaire Wolfgang Puck and his beautiful designer wife Barbara Lazaroff (originally from New York). Your fantastic Granita restaurant is 10 years old. I love[d] attending the birthday bash in Malibu. LA Weekly wrote: The invitations instructed guests to dress in white – to show off their Malibu tans. It was easy, then, to spot the partygoers headed to Granita’s 10th anniversary bash as we arrived. You don’t often see so many husbands and wives both dressed in the color of christenings, tennis and brides... Unlike the last party Wolfgang Puck and Barbara Lazaroff gave for one of their restaurants — to commemorate the closing of their original Spago Hollywood — there was no end-of-an-era sadness... Granita, after a decade of chef changes, slow winters and constant rumors of being up for sale, is still a fine place to celebrate the good life in Malibu. The second reason that Granita is important is because it symbolizes the importance of Barbara Lazaroff to the Puck-Lazaroff empire. Barbara has her detractors (as does Granita), but it would behoove men and women in the business to appreciate Barbara's impact -- the importance of a great partner, of a team -- on the building of any business empire: Like any of the great talent managers of Hollywood, fundamentally it has been Barbara all along who has understood Wolfgang best and who has helped to make him the phenomenon he is today. Whereas the humble village boy might have hesitated and cautiously undersold himself, Barbara constantly oversold him, confident that Wolf would always live up to her billing. And he did. (Super Chef, p. 46) This extends beyond Fine Dining. Barbara also wanted the more casual dining -- something more than McDonald's for their kids (p. 28). Barbara promoted their charity work, long ago formalized as the Puck-Lazaroff Charitable Foundation, most famously their annual American Wine & Food Festival (see previous article), whose 23rd event will be held this weekend on September 24. There are several pages about Granita in Super Chef (pp. 19-22), particularly Barbara's insider stories about the agonies of opening the place. From the outset, everything seemed slow and difficult: As a last straw, while she and Wolf were on a cruise with her parents and his, they discovered that approval had not come from the City of Malibu because the city had lost their plans six months earlier. They had to rush the papers in, because within a week the city was putting a stop to new restaurants. "As Wolf said, I got more faxes than the captain" of their cruise. All the while she was building Eureka and putting in appearances at Spago and Chinois. But the heartache and perseverance paid off, and Barbara has received several awards, including the 2000 Millennium Hall of Fame award from the National Association of Women Business Owners - Los Angeles (NAWBOLA) "for her innovative restaurant concepts," calling Granita "Lazaroff’s dynamic and wildly unique 'abstract interpretation' of the quality of light and sense of movement underwater." Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken compared their feelings over the loss of City Restaurant to the loss of a child (Super Chef p. 151-152): Barbara must feel much the same. She recently told me how difficult it was to say goodbye, explaining "I did so much with my own hands." However, Granita had good life, and instead of mourning I will treasure a personal memory. Before moving from Los Angeles back East a few years ago, the last restaurant I dined at was Granita. I drove up from Los Angeles to Malibu, entered the aquarian hall, bedecked in Art, and feasted on perhaps the best meal I ever ate in Los Angeles. I came back to Los Angeles in the dark, car windows open and cool sea air blowing. It is a wonderful memory: thank you, Barbara, Wolf, Jennifer, Tom, and everyone on staff, now and before. Well done. Super chef: Wolfgang Puck Previous articles: Fly Avion (Wolfgang Puck Included) Romancing the Stove - or The Way We Worked? Wolfgang Puck: Eastern Empire Wolf Want Meat: Wolfgang Puck Steakhouse Wolf Wines & Dines, or Puck's Party [Wolfgang Puck (complete articles)] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine --> back to superchefblog