Tucson’s Terra Cotta Cracks Beverly Hills

Whatever happened to Noa Noa?

“In ordinary times, I would have liked to make arrangements with any of the people I talked to,” says Lessing Gold, who represents the Japanese investors in the late restaurant. Ever since the Beverly Hills restaurant closed last June, Gold has been interviewing restaurateurs. Those who came up with a new concept for the space include Bruce Cost, former chef/owner of San Francisco’s Monsoon, and Spago alumnus Takasha Iwasaki, who owns Carrots in Santa Monica. “But in today’s tough market,” Gold says, “I think we need something that’s a little unique and is going to be popular and popularly priced.”

When Donna Nordin and Don Luria, who own the Tucson-based Cafe Terra Cotta, originally approached him about taking over the space, Gold says he immediately turned them down. But they wouldn’t take no for an answer. They insisted that he visit their Tucson restaurant, and Gold liked what he saw. He liked what he heard even better: Nordin and Luria said they’d spend their own money. Gold and his partners agreed to match it.

So on Jan. 7, Noa Noa will become Terra Cotta. The menu (lunch $10, dinner $22) is modeled after San Francisco’s Fog City Diner, and will feature what the team calls Contemporary Southwestern Cuisine. “When we first opened in Tucson,” Luria says, “we had trouble describing our food. So we just told everyone it was California cuisine with chiles and cilantro.”

“The only thing we can’t really change,” Nordin says, “are those bathrooms. We heard under Noa Noa, they played a sort of jungle music. We thought we just might have howling coyotes.”

NEW BEATS: Melrose Place, the California/French/Asian restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, is only a couple of months old but chef Vaughn Allen has already left. “Since day one the owner and I just had too many differences,” Allen says, “so I thought it was best to get out now.”

The peripatetic Allen has already found another job. He will be co-chef at Tatou, the lavish, ‘30s-style supper club set to open in Beverly Hills in January.

Tatous will be springing up all over. Owners Mark Fleischman (who bought the legendary Studio 54 when owners Ian Schrager and the late Steve Rubell were sent to prison for tax evasion), and Dezi Szonntagh (former saucier at Le Cirque) now have Tatous in New York and Aspen, and are considering opening branches in Miami, Chicago and Maui. “We have some Japanese backers who are interested in opening a lot of Tatous,” Szonntagh says, “if we get our formula down the way we want it, it should be no problem.”

PIZZA: Eight years ago Evan Kleiman opened Angeli Caffe on Melrose. She served great pasta and authentic pizza. Three years ago the man whose secret pizza recipe helped Kleiman revolutionize Italian cooking in Southern California opened his own tiny trattoria, Da Pasquale, in Beverly Hills. Everybody said it was a lot like Angeli, and the little trattoria grew. Now Angeli is also coming to Beverly Hills.

The new Angeli in the Rodeo Collection opens Monday. It is the fourth Angeli (Kleiman also owns Trattoria Angeli in West L.A. and Angeli Mare in Marina del Rey), but Kleiman herself will be doing the cooking. She plans, in addition to some of the signature pastas and pizza, homey foods such as stews and chicken cacciatore . There will even be dishes from southern France. “I’d like to get to a point after we are open for a while,” Kleiman says, “to maybe even do Greek or Persian dinner menus once in a while.”

Kleiman, who says she got a great deal on the rent, is opening without any financial backing. “I feel that it’s the only way to open a place right now,” she says. Until the inside remodeling is completed, Angeli will be open only for breakfast and lunch.

MORE PIZZA: Kathie and Mike Gordon, who own Oli Ola, Rosti and Toscana on the Westside, are coming over the hill to open their fourth place: Terrazzo Toscana on Nov. 11 in Encino’s Courtyard Shopping Center. Prices at the 200-seat restaurant will be lower than Toscana (pastas $7.50, entrees $10-$19). The Gordons had originally planned a deli counter but decided not to compete with their next-door neighbor, the Broadway Deli (also opening this month). “So for now,” Kathie Gordon says, “it’s just a takeout counter in the back by the pizza oven.”

EVEN MORE PIZZA: Restaurateurs aren’t the only ones into pizza. First we find Madonna eating pizza in the nude in her new book “Sex.” Then we hear that actors James Caan and Cathy Moriarty are looking for someone to run their Mulberry Street Pizzeria, which opened last month in Beverly Hills. Co-owner Ronald Lorenzo, who ran the place, won’t be able to come to work: He’s been convicted of cocaine trafficking.