Early on a Sunday evening in July, a long line of smartly dressed guests wraps around the outside of Josiah Citrin’s California-French fine-dining restaurants Mélisse and Citrin in Santa Monica. Friends, family and fans are there to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Mélisse. As the line balloons, Citrin appears in his chef whites and iconic beaded necklaces to usher them into the party with open arms, as if to say, “Welcome to my house!” Inside, legendary restaurateurs, chefs and former Mélisse cooks pitch in: A.
O.C.’s Suzanne Goin fries salt cod fritters topped with saffron aioli in the kitchen, Providence’s Michael Cimarusti serves crispy potatoes with crème fraîche and herbs in the dining room and Joan McNamara of Joan’s on Third and Michael McCarty of Michael’s Santa Monica mingle with guests.
The scene, not far from the Pacific Ocean in which Citrin grew up surfing, is a window into his life and a snapshot of the impact he and his restaurant have had on the city. When Mélisse opened in 1999, Citrin introduced L.A.
to a new style of French dining, the kind that only a kid who grew up in Santa Monica could create — one rich with California produce. “I can’t say French,” he told the L.A.
Times in 1999 . “Too many vegetables to be French.” “When I was growing up in L.
A., L’Orangerie and L’Ermitage were the big French restaurants in town,” says Goin, who opened her own acclaimed restaurant, the now-closed Lucques, in 1998 with Car.