Prewar Saigon Comes to Beverly Hill via San Francisco

Crustacean, the family-owned Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, opens its 180-seat cousin here Sunday in Beverly Hills. It’s the third restaurant for Helene An, the Saigon-born restaurateur whose dream for the 6,000-square-foot space is to re-create the sophistication and French Colonial ambience of life in prewar Saigon.

Working with family helps. An will preside over the kitchen as executive chef and Elizabeth, one of her three daughters, takes the reins as general manager.

Regulars to the San Francisco restaurant on Polk Street will have to come to Los Angeles to try some dishes. Exclusive to L.A. are lemon beef carpaccio, angel hair pasta crab soup and lobster in tamarind sauce. The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, beginning Jan. 27. Slated for February is afternoon tea featuring vegetable- and fruit-based custards and pastries.

* Crustacean, 9646 Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 205-8990. This Sunday through Jan. 26, dinner only will be served from 5:30 to 10 p.m. (4 p.m. on Sunday); beginning Jan. 27, the restaurant will be open seven days a week for dinner, and Monday-Friday for lunch.

Forward, March: A Superior Court judge has cleared the way for the move of Spago from its Sunset Strip location to the space once occupied by Bistro Garden on North Can~on Drive in Beverly Hills. (Three limited partners in Spago had tried to block the move.) Now Spago’s Wolfgang Puck has other matters to deal with, like finding an executive chef for the new Beverly Hills project.

Puck had hired Michael Otsuka, former chef de cuisine at Patina, but the two barely had time to get acquainted before Otsuka hung up his apron and left the Puck empire last month.

When reached for comment, Otsuka said his recent departure was due to “artistic differences in approach.” He added: “We left on very good terms. I may be doing some work in the future for the company.”

Meanwhile, the new Spago Chicago is playing to packed houses. Executive chef Francois Kwaku-Dongo has fine-tuned the menu at the bi-level restaurant, bar and lounge. And to the delight of shivering Chicagoans, meat loaf is here to stay.

More Is Better: Restaurateur Bob Spivak (the Grill) opens his eighth Daily Grill today in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX. . . . No rest for Bob Mandler (Chin Chin). His sixth Chin Chin opened last week at New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas. . . . And Craig Albert started the New Year off with his second Tacone Wraps in the Promenade at Woodland Hills. The bestseller so far with the moviegoing crowd: “The Samurai,” teriyaki chicken, grilled pineapple, Asian rice and bean sprouts wrapped in a flavored tortilla.

Don’t Forget to Write: After eight years as executive chef at Citrus, Alain Giraud bids adieu to his restaurant family, Michel Richard and his crew, and joins Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel at the end of the month.

“They’re giving me an impressive title,” Giraud says. “Chef-director. I’m not sure what it means, but it sounds good.”

His mission is to oversee and upgrade all the hotel’s food and beverage service. Then, by early summer, he’ll open a venue within the hotel, putting a California-French spin on what may be an 80-seat cafe. Its opening will coincide with an overall $2.3-million renovation of the hotel.

“I’ll use my background in Provencal cuisine. The food will be something light, fresh, fun, like the beach life,” said the alumnus of L’Ermitage Meissonnier in Avignon, Ho^tel de Crillon and Le Grand Vefour in Paris.

Who will step into his shoes at Citrus? “Michel. At least for a while,” Giraud says.

Hand to Mouth: The dining style at Ibex, Pasadena’s first Ethiopian restaurant, is user-friendly. For diners who have never used injera, a sour-tasting flat bread to scoop up gravied dishes, sisters Elleni and Belaynesh Alemayehu provide silverware. While they’re doing the cooking, their brother, Kifle Alemayehu, runs the front of the house.

The 2-month-old venture is the sisters’ dream. And so it is for fans of Ethiopian food who don’t want to travel to the Fairfax area for a hit of gomen (greens cooked with onion, garlic, green peppers and spices) or ye-miser watt (red lentils simmered in red chili pepper, onions and garlic).

The name? It comes from an endangered species, a variety of wild goat found in mountains in Europe, Asia and Africa, said Solomon Terrera, publicist and husband of Belaynesh. “There are only 200 left. And we wanted to draw attention to the plight,” he said.

* Ibex Ethiopian Restaurant, 119 W. Green St., Pasadena. (818) 793-3822. Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner, 5-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. Closed Mondays.