What’s Opening? What’s Closing?

“I know there have been rumors going around and everybody has been talking about it,” says Eberhard Mueller, former chef at New York’s Le Bernardin, “but everything that has come out in the press about my new restaurant has not come from me.” For the record, Mueller says he is opening a seafood restaurant in the Water Garden complex in Santa Monica. It is to be called Opus and the opening is slated for April.

While Mueller says his menu will basically be the same as the one at Le Bernardin, the ambience will be more casual. “I am going to use the same products, ingredients and suppliers I did in New York,” says Mueller. “I am just going to tone down the interior a bit. Make it a little bit more casual, more Californian.”

Construction on the restaurant has begun, and the chef-owner has already obtained the necessary permits, including a pre-approved liquor license. The restaurant will seat 75 in the main dining room, with 30 seats in the bar and 40 more outdoors, overlooking the man-made lake.

Prices at Opus will be adjusted to the Los Angeles market. “Bernardin prices are, even in New York, out of the question,” says the ex-New Yorker. “So I think lunch will average around $22 to $25, including wine and service, and we are shooting for between $40 and $48 at dinner.”

The 31 investors in Mueller’s project are mostly tenants in the Water Garden. “There are law firms going in, there are accounting firms going in, and a whole bunch of people from those firms are involved,” says Mueller. “We raised the rest of the money through a private placement memorandum.”

Asked if it is true that megamogul Marvin Davis has money in the restaurant, Mueller replied “that is only partially correct.” He explained: “Marvin Davis is a partner in the complex, and I got quite a bit of tenant improvement money from them, so indirectly he is involved. As much as I like to be associated with his name, I didn’t want to have somebody with his financial power being directly involved in the restaurant. Things have worked out the way I hoped they would.”

STILL GOING: “No, L’Orangerie is not closing,” says owner Gerard Ferry. The rumors that his pricey French restaurant is about to close are wrong. “I am not going to say it is easy in these times, but we have no financial problems. We are busy on the weekend, it’s a little bit slow during the week. Some Tuesdays are good, some Tuesdays are lousy.” What the restaurant is doing, says Ferry, is instituting a $35 three-course prix fixe dinner. The menu, which will change weekly, is available Sunday through Thursday.

Two other restaurants rumored to be closing also aren’t. “As with most vicious and inaccurate rumors, it’s nearly impossible to trace the source,” says a spokesman for Jimmy’s, the elegant Beverly Hills restaurant. He adds that the restaurant has just had “the best October in three years, and the restaurant’s party rooms are almost fully booked for the holiday season.” Equally indignant is Asylum’s general manager Greg Grafft. “We heard right after we opened that the health department closed us down, that we’d opened without any sort of back funding and we’d run out of money, or that John (owner John Thomas) was a rich boy who opened the place to become introduced to Beverly Hills society.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, says Grafft, “the rumors of our demise are much exaggerated.”

OPENINGS: The Whole Enchilada, a southwestern/Mexican restaurant at 163 N. La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills, featuring chicken mole, Route 66 chile, New Mexico Shepherd’s Pie and $1 Margaritas. Owner Christos Haritonides is also opening a second branch of his Greek Connection restaurant adjacent to the Whole Enchilada in January. . . . Il Fornaio, a 12,000-square feet retail store, in-house bakery, and restaurant with lounge and outside patio at 18051 Von Karman Ave. in Irvine. The first of its kind in Southern California (the Il Fornaio chain has opened similar restaurants in San Francisco and Palo Alto), the restaurant is open daily, with dinner entrees ranging from $8.50 for chicken to $17 for veal. “(The Il Fornaio in) Beverly Hills is a mere coffee shop, compared to this restaurant, which is four times its size,” says managing partner Giorgio Vanzulli, adding that the company plans to remodel the Beverly Hills restaurant in January. . . .

NO COMMENT: “Costumed ‘goddesses’ pour from shoulder height into ornate chalices as belly dancers sway to modal melodies. Computerized lighting, sound and other special effects announce the entrance of ‘Caesar’ and ‘Cleopatra,’ who personally welcome guests to their domain.” The Bacchanal restaurant at Caesars Palace has just reopened after a face lift that cost $500,000 and took six weeks. Open for dinner only, the $60-per-person, seven-course prix fixe spectacle includes three wines and a flaming dessert.

SAME PLACE, NEW OWNERS: The Palm Court Restaurant, in the office building complex at the corner of Santa Monica and Sepulveda boulevards, has been bought by KEI International, the company that owns Robata in Beverly Hills. “Parties Plus sold out to a larger company and this was sort of left over, and was bought by the Japanese company,” says the restaurant’s Noele de Saint Gall. She adds that chef Rich Kitos is still at the stove, but a dozen new items such as seared tuna wrapped in mustard greens and a meat-loaf BLT sandwich, have been added to the menu. The latter, she assures us, “is really good.”

DOING THE LOCO-MOTION: The Mandarin, the upscale Beverly Hills Chinese restaurant, is introducing three new services called Food ‘n Motion: catering, delivery and take-out. Is it because business is bad? “No,” says owner Philip Chiang. “We’ve been doing take-out for some time, but people wanted more. Now we just have a better, organized way of doing it.” . . . and Indigo on 3rd Street will now deliver anything on its menu, within a two-mile radius, for a $2.50 surcharge.

BARGAINS: The luncheon special at Dragon Inn Seafood in Chinatown. Served every day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., choose from 33 entrees, served with steamed rice, for only $3.55. . . . Mario’s Restaurant in Westwood is celebrating it’s 28th anniversary with early-bird dinners from 3 to 6:30 p.m. daily. Dinner includes entree, soup or salad and a dessert for $9.95.