SANTA MONICA Calif. Monday nights used to be dead at JiRaffe, a Cali-French outpost here owned by chef Raphael Lunetta. While diners scrambled for one of its 80 seats Thursday through Saturday, on Mondays “they wouldn...
Randy Schoch is an industry veteran who knows all the usual ways to draw customers to his restaurants. But when he launched Ling & Louie’s Asian Bar and Grill in 2006, he took a completely different marketing tack. He...
During a recent meal, a dark thought visited Raphael Lunetta. “I was consuming something from far away, a place I’ve not seen, and I thought, ‘So how it is I can trust what I’m eating? How well can the (USDA) regulate...
In 14 years as co-owner of Pizzeria Bianco, Chris Bianco has become a pizza-making legend in the minds of many, but not his own. While working the wood-fired hearth at the 42-seat Phoenix restaurant...
The second and final turn of the evening is over, and Raphael Lunetta plops down into a chair in the dining room of his restaurant, JiRaffe. A deep sigh and relieved wide smile hint that he’s glad this...
Dick Elliott wasn’t a true restaurateur when he bought The Colony House in 1989. The recently retired corporate lawyer viewed the purchase as a real estate investment, a got-to-have property with an uninterrupted view...
The second and final turn of the evening is over, and Raphael Lunetta plops down into a chair in the dining room of his restaurant, JiRaffe. A deep sigh and relieved wide smile hint that he’s glad this...
Vic Cassano Sr. was a gregarious promoter of Cassano’s Pizza King, which he founded in 1953 in Dayton, Ohio. But when it came to the details of his business, he was intensely private, refusing to open his books to...