Pomegranate Gets a Southern Makeover

“Roxbury is going anti-trendy,” says Brad Johnson, of his Los Angeles restaurant/bar/jazz club. “We are trying to treat everybody very nicely.”

The Sunset Strip nightclub, built in what used to be Preston Sturges’ Player’s Club, is known for its Saturday-night traffic jams, terminally too-too crowds, and condescending waiters. But now, promises Johnson, “you don’t have to be Tom Cruise to get a table.”

Johnson, who owned New York’s Memphis, is going South again. He’s about to turn the former Pomegranate, on Melrose, into Georgia, a Southern/Carribbean restaurant. The ultra-modern room will go sultry with dark wood, murals, ceiling fans and iron sconces that look like palm leaves.

He and his partners (they include former Laker Norm Nixon, and record producer/Roxy co-owner Lou Adler), also plan to open a coffee shop/magazine stand on the space. The unnamed coffee shop will share the restaurant’s kitchen and will be open for breakfast and lunch and, at night, for coffee and desserts.

Johnson says Adler came up with the name Georgia. “It’s where Norm Nixon is from and it’s the South.” Does that mean the coffee shop could possible be named after another state, say, Arkansas? “No way. I voted for Bill Clinton, but it still won’t be Arkansas.”

LIGHT LUNCH?: “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Paramount Pictures senior vice president Jerry Sherman, when asked if it were true that the studio has told most of its execs that meals off the lot can no longer be expensed. “Any executive who has a business meeting off the premises can put it on his expense account.” Sherman did say that Paramount had made a change in the Studio commissary: Executives used to use credit cards, but now if you’re a senior vice president or higher, you may merely sign for your lunch.

SEE YOU SOON: “A bistro,” says Rick Steffann. “Everybody here knows what that is. If you go in and have a bowl of soup, French bread and a glass of wine, the waiter is going to sneer at you.”

“But in Europe,” he adds, “a bistro is casual and friendly. It’s not dumping $75. Here it’s a little bar with high tech/high price stuff.”

So while his Pasadena restaurant, Abiento, might well be a bistro, don’t expect chef/owner Steffann to admit it. He will open the 150-seat Abiento (the name is a version of “see you later” in French) in February on the site of the former Monahan’s. He’ll have a simple rotating menu, with some country French, some Italian, a lot of pastas and homemade soups. (“But no pizza,” Steffann says. “There has to be one spot in California that doesn’t do pizza.”) It’s not little and it’s not high-priced, but it still sounds a lot like a bistro.

TOO MANY COOKS?: What happens when the restaurant and the chef have different public relations people? Letters such as the following from Eileen Koch & Co.: “It has come to our attention that the public relations firm of KOLI Communications has been conducting public relations for Pyramid’s executive chef, Robert Gadsby. Please be advised that my firm is the public relations firm hired for Pyramid Restaurant and is responsible for all of its publicity.” Outrage from the chef in question when he hears of the letter. And soothing words from Alan Philips, owner of the Beverly Hills restaurant. “I asked the girls to coordinate with one another. . . . We are working and humming in the same direction. I am very committed to Robert and my new restaurant.”

BARGAINS: Tommy Tang’s in West Hollywood is celebrating a decade in the business by rolling back prices on three signature dishes to what they were when the Thai restaurant first opened: Sate, $3.50; Tommy Duck, $7.95, and Spicy BBQ Chicken, $5.95. The specials will be in effect through December. . . . The hors d’oeuvres are free during happy hour in the lounge at Jimmy’s in Beverly Hills, weekdays between 3 and 7 p.m.