Our Loss Is France’s Gain

Fennel, on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, imports French chefs on a regular basis. Its neighbor, Opera, just down the street (see this week’s review), is about to export a French chef back to that country. He is Claude Koeberle, a veteran of such other local restaurants as Les Anges, L’Orangerie and Tamayo, and the chef who set up the Opera kitchen with the help of Debbie Slutsky.

As of Sept. 1, though, he will call it quits and take off on a driving expedition through Central and South America. Then, late this fall, he will end up back in the hill town of St. Paul de Vence on the Cote d’Azur. His plan is to open a 10-room inn and a 50-seat restaurant on the site of a 400-year-old carriage house that is a designated historical landmark. He plans to call the place Le Relais de Romarin--meaning the Inn (or Relay Station) of Rosemary (as in the herb of the same name). Koeberle has been working on the project with his father for some seven years and expects to open next summer. Eventually he also hopes to open a Mexican restaurant in the south of France.

HANS ACROSS SANTA MONICA: Another noted Westside chef--or, rather, a couple of chefs--will also be moving soon, sort of. Hans and Mary Rockenwagner, of Rockenwagner’s in Venice, are about to take over a new, second location, on 4th Street in Santa Monica.

There, they will install Hans’ sister, Susy Walser, and her husband, Hans-Dieter, a chef, who trained with Hans Rockenwagner in Germany. Susy ran the Rockenwagners’ father’s restaurant, Holzschopf, in Slingen for the past 10 years. Together, in Santa Monica, they will present what Hans Rockenwagner describes as “a faster-paced, cheaper kind of Italian place, with innovative home-style cooking.” Mary Rockenwagner’s family is Italian, he says, “and her mother is a great cook and inspiration for the new place.”

The restaurant, to be called Fama, opens late this year, or early next. Meanwhile, the original Rockenwagner’s stays put in Venice, with Hans and Mary in charge--and with, says Hans, “a menu that will change more often than it does now.”

EVENTS: Gilliland’s in Santa Monica presents a “French-California Wine Showdown,” matching French and California wines made from the same grapes, over a four-course dinner, next Sunday at 6 p.m. Cost is $55 per person. . . . And Bob Morris of Gladstone’s in Pacific Palisades and the Original Malibu Sea Lion USA (among other restaurants) and Santa Monica Mayor James Conn co-host a benefit for the Children’s Place day care center in Ocean Park at the Santa Monica Pier carrousel, Aug. 29. Food and entertainment are included, for $25 a head. Information: (213) 399-1631.