Beverly Hills rich in fabulous food, shoes, chic hotels

By Heather John
Los Angeles Times

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A New York fashion type asked me where to find the hottest scene in Los Angeles. That's easy: the women's shoe salon at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills on a Friday afternoon.

One of the hot shopping and fashion spots in Beverly Hills is the women's shoe salon at the Neiman Marcus store on Wilshire Boulevard. Advertiser library photo • Nov. 29, 2001

My first stop was Neiman Marcus. I'll concede that Neiman's falls into that potentially snobbish category I was trying to avoid — unless, of course, you treat it as theater. As the fashionable gear up for the weekend with open boxes of Prada Ombre slings and patent-leather Christian Louboutin pumps scattered at their feet, you'll find few other places for such an entertaining show. On this Friday afternoon, hours after the news that fashion photographer Helmut Newton had died in a car crash by the Chateau Marmont, the buzz was centered on a Manolo Blahnik 4 1/2-inch-high bondage stiletto called the Helmut ($685), which had arrived in the store earlier that week.

Although just a few blocks from the Neiman Marcus/Saks Fifth Avenue/Barneys triumvirate, the year-old Mosaic Hotel seemed a world away. Softly lighted with dozens of candles sparkling on a tiled wall, the lobby's ambience was calming and romantic. I had booked on the hotel's Web site the Sleepless in L.A. special, two nights for $398 plus tax — not cheap, but less expensive than some of the city's other upscale options, such as the Peninsula and the Regent Beverly Wilshire. (The Mosaic's special has since increased to $438.) My room, one of 49, was perfectly charming, kitted with Bulgari bath products, Frette linens and bathrobes and copious down pillows.

The next morning I met another friend, Sena, for breakfast at the stylish Avalon Hotel, about a mile from the Mosaic and home of the Blue on Blue poolside restaurant. We sank into vintage chairs in the Mid-Century lounge and ordered a smoked-turkey Benedict and hotcakes with blueberry compote. A server brought a silver pot of good, strong coffee.

By the time we pried ourselves from this oasis, it was almost noon, and we headed for the Museum of Television and Radio on Beverly Drive.

"Are you here for 'Sex and the City'?" a clerk asked. Not having a clue, we nodded yes and were shown to a screening room. Turns out the museum was hosting a "Sex and the City" marathon on weekends. We caught the racy "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" episode, during which museum goers — many of whom were decades older than the show's core audience — gasped and laughed, a hoot in and of itself.

Upstairs in the Stanley E. Hubbard Library, you can search a database for almost any television or radio program imaginable, then watch or listen at a monitor with headphones. Sena was itching to see "Square Pegs," the old high-school sitcom starring "Sex and the City" actress Sarah Jessica Parker as Patty Greene and Jami Gertz as Muffy Tepperman. In the 1983 episode Sena selected, Bill Murray guest-starred as a politically incorrect substitute teacher. You can load as many as three programs at a time, but we chose just one.

We took our leave and crossed the street to check out the newly opened Taschen bookstore. Philippe Starck gets credit for the design. Twenty computer screens, some on the ceiling, broadcast collages from the German company's arty and often controversial books. On this afternoon, in a memorial to the owner's friend, both the front and back walls were lined with Taschen America's "Helmut Newton Work" ($40). When a customer inquired about the daunting 66-pound "Sumo" — another Newton title which, at $3,000, was the most expensive book produced in the 20th century, according to Taschen — an employee advised, "Anyone dressed in all black can help you."

I chose the $40 "Work" and walked up Beverly Drive to Nate 'n Al to grab a bite and peruse my purchase. Even at 4 p.m., this landmark delicatessen was hopping. Servers couldn't have been nicer.

On the way back to the hotel, I stopped on North Canon Drive at Le Palais des Thes, which opened in November as the first U.S. outlet for the Parisian tea company. Beautifully packaged tins line the shelves, and customers are offered more than 200 varieties.

That evening my friend Vincent and I went to Mako on Beverly Drive. The menu is best described as Japanese tapas. Although we were disappointed that the restaurant had run out of crispy oysters and snow-crab tempura, we found plenty to keep us occupied, including seared foie gras with litchi, Peking duck and pad Thai with shrimp. For dessert, we shared melt-in-your-mouth Valrhona chocolate cake.

But the real action was at the Crescent, a new hotel on Crescent Drive. Formerly the Beverly Crescent, the property reinvented itself as a hip boutique hotel and reopened in July. The place was teeming with post-grads.

The next morning, my friend Jill and I checked out Urth Caffe's new spot on Beverly Drive. As fans of the Melrose location's Spanish latte, we were relieved to see that the menu was the same. The crowd could not have been more different.

On any given morning, the clientele at the Melrose Urth offers wilder fashions than most shows in Paris. The previous weekend, while sitting at an outdoor table on Melrose, I was treated to a delicious sighting of an unshaven Jake Gyllenhaal.