A Nicky Blair’s in Milan? There’s Talk

“Some very important Italians--I can’t go into names--flew me first class to Milan to talk about franchising Nicky Blair’s,” says the owner of the glitzy Sunset Strip restaurant that bears his name. “I wouldn’t have to be there much, maybe once every couple of months, and they would copy the exact way my restaurant is here,” he says. Blair says the prospective franchisees will fly to Los Angeles in the next couple of weeks to continue the discussion.

Coals to Newcastle? Blair doesn’t think so--and not because his restaurant is known as much for its bar scene as for its cuisine. “I know it’s ironic,” he admits, “but the thing is that the food over there is not that great. My Italian food is better than their Italian food. For some reason they just cook normal.”

Meanwhile Blair, who appeared with Elvis Presley in the 1964 film “Viva Las Vegas,” says he has scrapped plans to open a New York-style steak house in the new Forum Shops, the 240,000-square-foot mall that opened last month in Las Vegas. The Palm restaurant will be going into that space. “Las Vegas is a town that’s happening,” says Blair, “but we were having problems.”

RITE OF PASSAGE: Claude Koeberle told The Times last week that while working at Ma Maison he dumped a pail of water on pastry chef Anne Sprecher because it was the only way he could get her to put on a clean jacket. “I am no angel,” Koeberle said, “but Anne used to get very dirty when she was working with chocolate, and she just wouldn’t change.”

Well, Sprecher (who now cooks exclusively for the Ted Dansons) has a different version of the story. “I hadn’t even touched chocolate yet,” says Sprecher. “Claude dumped a pail of dirty water on me after I’d only been on the job two days. He just hoped I would go crying and leave. But I didn’t, I just changed my jacket and went back to work. The truth of the matter is Claude cannot work with women. He is totally impossible.”

Sprecher says that Wolfgang Puck, who was then the chef at Ma Maison, hired her when Koeberle was off. “Then Wolf called me back and said, ‘I’m really sorry but I can’t hire you after all; the pastry chef won’t work with a woman.’ ” But Sprecher persisted and finally got Puck to agree to try her out for a week. “Claude didn’t even talk to me the first day,” recalls Sprecher, “but I just figured he only spoke French.

Sprecher said she and Koeberle became friends after he realized that she wasn’t going to be so easy to get rid of. “Claude has mellowed a lot, but he certainly didn’t clean me up,” says Sprecher. “I went to France to work, and that changed me.”

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE: The signs in three Pavilions markets say only that the Starbucks coffee kiosks will close on June 15. According to Laura Moix, media relations contact for the Seattle-based company, Starbucks is pulling out of the Vons stores because the market is a union organization and they are not. “We have kiosks in supermarkets in the Northwest and they are non-union, and that seems to work out very well,” says Moix. “Going into a union store was a test for us. It didn’t work well enough to continue.” Vons did not return calls.

THE ACCIDENTAL CHEF: Don’t look for Picnic, Claude Segal’s 50-seat West Los Angeles restaurant, to open until around June 20. “I broke my wrist in a motorcycle accident” says the chef/owner. “Somebody cut me off at a stop sign, and there was no way to go but into a car.” The cast is off, but Segal wants to wait another week before he resumes cooking.

NORSKE NEWS: Wisconsin’s Norske Nook is so famous among food lovers that although its home-town, Osseo, has a population of 1,500, the Nook sells 800 pieces of pie every day. Now word has reached us that owner Helen Myhre has quietly sold her restaurant. What will happen to the killer pie, the lutefisk and lefse suppers? “It’s still basically the same place,” says the Nook’s Amy Nieman reassuringly, “we just expanded the menu a bit. The guy that bought it is from over in Eau Claire.”

FAST BITES: Look out Jody Maroni. World Links, a new fast-food concept featuring healthy, hand-made sausages, and a Mexican version with fire-roasted red peppers, has opened in the Century City Marketplace. . . . The Green Burrito now offers a children’s menu. Choices include a small bean and cheese burrito, taquitos or beef taco with rice, beans, chips, a 12 oz. beverage and a toy, for $1.59.

FOR THE RECORD: An item in this column on May 24 was not meant to imply that Engine Co. No. 28 responded to the civil unrest in Los Angeles by printing on its check: “Remember, it’s a jungle out there.” In fact, the message was printed on checks since the restaurant opened in January, 1989, and was removed in late May.