French Consul Fries L.A., Steams at Figaro

When Figaro Madame writer Valerie Hanotel came to Los Angeles asking French expatriates how they felt about their adopted city, she got an earful. And many of the more outspoken critics were local chefs and restaurateurs.

“There is no family life, no social graces. They don’t know how to live,” said Sophie Healy of Champagne Bis. “The problem with the California man is that he fell straight from the tree into his Cadillac.” She also doesn’t like her customers’ habit of bringing their own wine to her restaurant. “I charge them $30 corkage fee to discourage them.”

Gerard Ferry of L’Orangerie complained that he had to train his customers not to pour ketchup on his food when the restaurant first opened. “I had to nicely tell them . . . and they relented,” he said.

But Los Angeles had to train him about sexism.

“We gave ladies menus without prices on them,” he told the writer for the magazine supplement of the conservative French newspaper Le Figaro. “A TV crew showed up at the restaurant one day to denounce this shocking habit. We gave up.”

The most shocking comment comes from French Consul Gen. Jean-Maurice Ripert, who says that the city is brain dead. “Los Angeles’ EEG registers flat,” he supposedly told Hanotel.

Ripert, who is paid to promote good relations between France and Southern California, denies the quote. “I never said these sentences . . . (and) I think the contrary. I reported back to my ministry and asked them to make a formal protest against the quotations. It was not an interview and there were not supposed to be any quotations of any kind,” says Ripert. “I received (Hanotel) in my office for a half hour to have an informative talk. She came to me for information on the city and the French community.”

“Of course, he said those things,” says Hanotel, from her office in Paris. “He knew it was an interview. I spent an hour in his office. We even took a picture of him.”

Champagne Bis’ Healy, who was also pictured in the article surrounded by eight smiling L.A.-based French chefs, had no complaints with the French magazine. But, she told Calendar, she only charges a $15 corkage fee, not $30.

When asked if her comments about family life and California men were accurate, Healy, who once owned the highly regarded Champagne restaurant with her former husband, chef Patrick Healy, says that she wasn’t talking about California men in general . “I only meant Patrick and his family.”

GRAND OPENINGS: Instead of simply renting searchlights or billboards, Desperados Hollywood Cantina & Cafe owners Jeff Carlis and Ted Fox have taken desperate steps to hype their new restaurant. They’ve hired a group of young women they’ve named the Desperado girls. The scantily dressed, boot-clad blond ambassadors mosey up and down Melrose Avenue, passing out boot-shaped key chains, poker chips and menus.

“You have to have a gimmick and these guys are pulling out all stops,” says a spokesman for the restaurant, located above the Gap in the former California Beach space. “In New York and the Far East and Europe, people are used to a restaurant being located above the street, but in L.A. no one looks up. So these girls are there pointing . . . ‘It’s up there, go up there , look up there .’ It’s a dual purpose kind of thing.” Of course, calling women “girls” is an uncool kind of thing.

Desperados, done up to resemble a Rosarita Beach-style cantina, will feature the Dirty Harry salad (mixed greens, black beans, tomatoes, salsa and avocado in a tostada shell), Hell’s Angels chicken wings, grilled mahi-mahi San Felipe and drinks with names like Mexican mudslide, Patron margarita and One & Only, a jar of fruit-infused tequila and orange liquor.

ROLE MODEL?: Wearing a chef’s apron and holding a wire whisk as if it were a wand, Ivana Trump was recently honored by Hiram Walker for her “dedication to furthering the role of women in the workplace and the home.” In honor of the occasion, the liquor company also awarded a cooking scholarship in Trump’s name. At the cocktail party/awards ceremony held in Mar-A-Lago, Fla., food was provided by members of the recently founded International Assn. of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, including Mary Sue Milliken of Border Grill in Santa Monica.

“Ivana Trump exemplifies women in the ‘90s,” Donald Coe, president of Hiram Walker, said when he presented the award to the ex-model/author/decorator/clothing designer. “She balances her home life and career, and still finds time to help others.”

RUNNING A RESTAURANT: Some of the best runners in last weekend’s Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon were from the restaurant division, which included teams from Planet Hollywood, Jimmy’s, Jack in the Box, Cicada, Xiomara, Schatzi on Main, Chaya Express, Spago and Gladstone’s. The annual event at Griffith Park raises money for the Child Study Center at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. Each team member runs 5.2 miles.

Planet Hollywood placed first in the men’s restaurant category, ahead of Jimmy’s and Gilbert’s El Indio. In the women’s category, only two teams entered, and Jimmy’s came in ahead of the Galley in Santa Monica. In the mixed category, Pasadena’s Xiomara placed first, ahead of Cicada, Chaya Express, Gladstone’s and Schatzi on Main.

“I guess (Arnold Schwarzenegger) doesn’t hire his employees for their athletic prowess,” says marathon volunteer Debbi Saunders.

In the celebrity relay, where each runner is required to only run a mile and, maybe, smile for the cameras, the restaurant team led by Spago’s Wolfgang Puck and Jimmy’s Jimmy Murphy finished 10th, ahead of the Rams Cheerleaders and KCBS News.