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Thursday, February 3, 7:00 pm
Members $90, guests $115
Perched on a crook of Sunset Boulevard, Chateau Marmont has been
a fixture of Hollywood history since it opened as a hotel in the
early 1930s. Stars of every generation have gravitated to the Marmont
for “the classic bones, the low-key glamour, the romantic
decadence, the natural discretion, the streak of rebellion, the
modern spirit that can cloak itself convincingly in period disguise,” as
Virginia Campbell wrote in Hollywood Life. The Marmont,
Campbell added, offers the “time-honored, tacit permission
for its guests to be their strange, driven, dreamy selves.” It’s
a quality that led Greta Garbo, The Eagles, Robert de Niro, and
Keanu Reeves to call the Marmont their long-term home.
Running the kitchen of Hollywood’s home away from home are
the husband and wife team of executive chef Mohammad Islam and
pastry chef Malika Ameen. Their arrival has transformed the Chateau’s
petite dining room into “one of the city’s best-kept
secrets,” as Los Angeles Times’ critic S. Irene
Virbila put it. Virbila wrote that Islam’s menu “is
not hotel cooking as usual. His sensibility is more Chez Panisse
than the Ritz.” Virbila loved the “pure and satisfying” tastes
of Islam’s seasonally inspired dishes like sushi-grade tuna
with Asian slaw and ponzu, prosciutto di Parma with arugula and
persimmon, and chestnut-ricotta ravioli with roasted tomato vinaigrette.
Virbila also had rave reviews for Ameen’s desserts, calling
her butterscotch silk with coconut sorbet and miniature Moravian
gingersnaps “dreamy.” After dinner, Virbila wrote, “I
wanted to move into the Marmont that night.”
Islam and Ameen were hired by Marmont owner Andre Balazs in 2003
to run the kitchens of the Marmont and another of Balazs’s
properties, The Standard Hollywood. Islam came off a stint as executive
sous-chef of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s outpost in New York,
Mercer Kitchen. Previously, he had worked under Sarah Stegner at
The Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago. Ameen, whom Virbila
described as “a talent to watch,” holds a pastry degree
from the French Culinary Institute and a culinary degree from the
Institute of Culinary Education, both in New York. Like Islam, Ameen
has worked at The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago, as well as The Cub Room
and Balthazar, both in New York. Just recently, Angeleno voted
Ameen Best Pastry Chef. |
