FOOD NOTES: R + D Kitchen opens
By Tom Teicholz at 18 July, 2008, 10:31 am
R + D Kitchen opened up on Montana Ave in Santa Monica last night. This is the new restaurant form the restaurant group that has Houston’s, Bandera and Gulfstream. There is already an R + D in Orange County but this is the first in the LA area.
R+D have taken up residence in the location of the former Montana, where Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant once held court. Montana was an SBE enterprise (Katsuya) — in order to keep Montana’s liquor license alive, R+D let Montana live as a lounge for abour a month after their deal to take it over, and the closed for near a year — they were under pressure to reopen this week or next in order not to lose their liquor license. This makes R+D the only place on Montana to have a full bar (as opposed to wine and beer) and so it is guaranteed to remain to a scene for singles and other tipplers who wish the cameriadeeie offered by cocktails.
The restaurant is beautifully designed allwoing the front to be open to the street with an L shaped bar on one side, and booths and talbles on the other — the kitchen is partially opne and large mirrors affixed to one wall allow the room to feel bigger and to view the ktichen from wherever you sit.
The kitchen is small and the menu is limited (thus far). The burger, famed at Houston’s is on the menu, as is the burratta tomato salad often seen at Bandera — both delivious– we had that and a chicken salad (called the Newporter) which was good but seemed light for an entree salad.
One thing that the Houston’s/Bandera people know hoiw to do is service — the waiter to customer ratio, even on suchj a croweded opening night was very high and they have moved over a lot of seasoned staff and traiers from the other restauirants for the opening weeks.
It will take several visits to work my way through the menu and get a reasonbable assessment of what R+D is, and will be. But it’s off to an impressive start and is a welcome addition to the neighborod (by the way, Blue Plate Grill was filled as well, showing that spillover can helo not hurt other businesses).
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