Laying Harold & Belle’s Rumors to Rest

Denise Le Gaux isn’t sure what’s going on, but she wishes it would stop. Denise is co-owner, with her husband Harold and their friends Alvin and Susan Honor, of Harold & Belle’s, a popular 20-year-old Creole-style restaurant on W. Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles. (Belle was Harold’s mother.) The restaurant has done well enough over the years, and in fact has recently undergone its third expansion since its founding. But a couple of months ago, says Le Gaux, people started calling up and asking if it was true that they were going to close.

“It’s become so much of an annoyance,” she says. “Almost every day somebody asks us when we’re going out of business or where we’re moving too. Just a few hours ago, somebody called to make a reservation for later in the week, but first wanted to know if we were definitely still going to be open by then.” Even more annoying, she adds, there are apparently rumors going around that Harold is seriously ill, and even that he has been shot. “Somebody called up and asked where they could send flowers, and when the funeral was going to be,” she says. “I just don’t know how all this got started.”

Let the rumors themselves be buried, then. Harold & Belle’s is open and plans to remain open, in its original location--and Harold (and Denise, and Alvin and Susan) are all feeling just fine, thank you. “About the only thing that’s changed lately other than our expansion,” Denise adds, “is that we’ve added fried chicken to the menu. It isn’t Creole, but it’s good.”

And speaking of chicken, if you haven’t found enough excuses to throw parties already this holiday season, you might consider celebrating the fact that the Buffalo chicken wing is 25 years old. This strange, curiously appealing all-American specialty--deep-fried chicken wings served with hot dipping sauce, celery and blue cheese dressing--was invented by the late Therese Bellissimo of Frank & Theresa’s Anchor Bar in Buffalo in late 1964. The story of its creation is the usual sort of thing--left-over ingredients, last-minute guests, culinary ingenuity, and so forth--but the Buffalo chicken wing has definitely taken off in the recent years. The Anchor Bar alone sells 36,000 pounds of them a month. And that ain’t chicken feed.

RESTAURANT TIDBITS: Steven Mettle is the new chef at Gordon’s in Aspen, replacing the co-founder of the restaurant, Gordon Naccarato. Naccarato retains an interest in Gordon’s, as does his wife Rebecca, who remains at the establishment. Naccarato himself, meanwhile, is in Los Angeles at least temporarily, where he is helping out old friend Mark Peel in the kitchen of Campanile. . . . Patrick Healy of Champagne in West L.A., is headed for Honolulu next month to help former L.A. chef Roy Yamaguchi (Le Gourmet, 385 North) celebrate the first anniversary of his Diamond Head restaurant, Roy’s. Healy is the only mainlander to have been invited to join the festivities, though three other Hawaii-based chefs will also participate. . . . A lot of New York restaurateurs must be shaking these days, and not because they’re spending too much time in their walk-in coolers, either. City officials have announced a crackdown on alleged cash rake-offs at area eating places. While not identifying suspected wrongdoers, a New York City spokesman claimed recently that as much as $6 billion might be due in taxes, interest and penalties on unreported restaurant income. The city also apparently plans to offer rewards to restaurant employees who finger their cash-grabbing bosses.

SPELLING CHECK: After I noted in this column some months ago that Bruno’s Chartreuse had reopened in Santa Monica on the site of the defunct Tosh, several readers contacted me to say that they were unable to get a phone number for the place from information operators. The problem, it turns out, is that the restaurant is now called simply Chartreuse. And the number, for your reference, is (213) 453-3333 . . . Paris-Brest in Woodland Hills was also the subject of many calls to this column. The problem, it turns out, is that the restaurant is listed as Le Paris- Brest. The number is (818) 888-9277.