At Feed Body & Soul, Kurt Steeber is new chef, drinks by Matthew Biancaniello

Feed Body & Soul, the year-old Venice restaurant focusing on food with a good-for-you bent (there’s pickled squash and tomato jam on your burger), has a new chef in Kurt Steeber, who succeeds Matthew Dickson. Meanwhile, mixologist Matthew Biancaniello, whose foraging, gardening and beekeeping proclivities fit the restaurant’s healthful-leaning intentions, has been enlisted to create the cocktails.

Steeber and Biancaniello already have started growing heirloom grains and spices on a couple of plots at the Cook’s Garden, just down the street on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. The duo also hit the Santa Monica Farmers Market together, picking up persimmons, for example, to be smoked for a cocktail. (Smoked persimmons!)

As of this week, Biancaniello, the “bar chef” known for his star turn at the helm of the Library Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel, is behind the bar at Feed Body & Soul on Tuesdays and Thursdays and is planning to host evenings of special drinks nights, for which reservations will be accepted.

Steeber has worked at the Ventana Inn & Spa in Big Sur and most recently at the Ranch at Live Oak in Malibu, as well as Farallon and Judy Rodgers’ Zuni Café in San Francisco. The new dinner menu at Feed includes salads such as beets with walnut chutney, white beans, orange, sorrel and crystal lettuce; starters such as scallops with chestnut puree, charred radicchio and figs; and mains such as king salmon with carrots, pistachio cheese, farro and carrot-top pesto.

Maybe the pumpkin and dates in the waffles that come with the chicken and waffles mitigate the fact that you’re eating chicken and waffles. There’s always kale salad.

1239 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 450-5550, www.feedbodyandsoul.com.

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