Leon’s executive chef, Emilio Nunez (a Spaniard like his boss), is a passionate student of Italian cooking but practices controlled innovation. In Beverly Hills, the delights include white beans and baby clams, or a salad of treviso -a slightly bitter Venetian import reminiscent of endive. Don’t come to either La Scala expecting zucchini flowers or grilled radicchio. Classic preparations don’t require a great deal of change. The older Leon hasn’t changed his style much in the last 30 years. It’s no wonder that six Presidents have dined here. The cellar contains virtually all of the greater names of European wine-some in magnums or double magnums-including venerable vintages, rare varietals and even a 60-year-old bottle of Jack Daniels that Leon keeps locked away in a vault alongside the Haut-Brion and the Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. It’s worth a visit to the Beverly Hills restaurant just to read the wine list. Leon pere, incidentally, owns a vineyard in Spain, Chateau Leon, and loves a good bottle of wine. This is a formal restaurant where the china is Limoges and the wine cellar contains more than 30,000 bottles. When you sit there under the Houdon bust of George Washington, or next to the Greek amphorae, and sip Chateau Petrus ’61 from Baccarat crystal, you won’t even dare loosen your tie. In the Beverly Hills restaurant it’s a different story. Needless to say, at the younger Leon’s restaurant there is never a dress code-it’s come as you are. If you go on a Saturday night, you might see a Streisand or a Farrah Fawcett, but you also might see a party of four in red sweats greedily spooning up the fettuccine they anticipated during three sets of tennis.
It’s the kind of place to which you bring the children-kids who like carpaccio and white truffles, of course. None of the waiters wear jackets, and there is a patio for open-air dining.
La Scala Malibu is now 7 years old, but despite the presence of fresh flowers, Florentine vases, china, crystal and original art, Leon fils keeps things casual. I guess it’s something he just came to naturally.” “He literally grew up in the restaurant, but we never talked about him being in the business. “Jeanny has always had his own mind,” he says with his own boyish smile. Jean Leon has always pushed himself, but never his son.
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