Australian chef Curtis Stone has closed his first restaurant in Los Angeles after 10 years, a Michelin star and a host of best restaurant accolades. Maude , the fine-dining, 24-seater in Beverly Hills named after his paternal grandmother and culinary mentor, was the culmination of Stone’s lifelong dream when it opened in early 2014. Acknowledging fine dining is a hard sell in the current economic environment, he is turning the restaurant into a pie shop.
“Degustation dining is a three-hour investment and a few hundred bucks per person. That adds up to special occasion dining,” Stone said. Over the coming weeks, Maude is being transformed into The Pie Room by Curtis Stone.
In a nod to his Australian roots, a wide selection of meat pies including rabbit and tarragon, beef shin, ox tail, and chicken and leek will be a staple at the new venture. After a customer request, Stone devised a chicken sausage roll that he says is “bizarrely, really good”. His other Michelin-starred restaurant in LA, Gwen, a butcher shop and restaurant named after his maternal grandmother, will remain open.
Stone recently began questioning why he was holding on to Maude, but then realised he was prepared to “close doors to open others”. “People told me I was out of my mind when I first opened Maude, and that it will never work. But we still made it work,” he said.
“It was a hard sell when I opened and there’s not a lot of these types of restaurants left.” Guests were treated to a .
