Dining Incognito
Table One
Jessica Taylor
12/01/2003

A long-favored getaway of celebrities and socialites, the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles maintains the ultimate reassuring amenity for diners who want to keep their companions and conversation confidential: a private dining room. When a merger or acquisition is in the works, the chef’s table, known simply as Table One, affords guests—the ones who are savvy enough to know about it—a lavish, yet discreet, dining experience.

Set in a canyon above Sunset Boulevard and occupying 12 verdant acres, the 1920s Mission-style hotel is de rigueur for executive power dining. While the Hotel Bel-Air’s famed restaurant and garden patio steal the spotlight for elite lunching, the single-table private dining room, located in the kitchen, is an irresistible draw for corporate suitors in the throes of consummating a match.

Table One, which is accessible through either the restaurant or, for greater privacy, a semi-private entrance through the back kitchen, seats up to eight people and is appointed with Provençal furnishings. A 9-foot-long window allows guests to observe the action in the kitchen, providing a suitably frenzied backdrop to the financial slicing, dicing, and grilling underway on their own side of the glass.


Chef Douglas Dodd gets the meal under-way by presenting his guests with a tray of gourmet amusees, including his signature dish, foie gras. Dodd’s traditional-French-fare-with-a-fresh-flair is perhaps best characterized by
Set in a canyon above Sunset Boulevard and occupying 12 verdant acres, the 1920s Mission-style hotel is de rigueur for executive power dining.
his obsession with this seductive delicacy. Whether it is tucked into mini-buns for foie gras bacon burgers or dressed in a silky cherry-rhubarb sauce, duck liver gives endless exercise to Dodd’s creativity. How many varieties has he prepared in the last year? "I have no idea," he laughs. "I’m always doing something different."

His ingenuity does not end with foie gras. The first of the dinner’s seven courses is a formidable presentation of fresh lobster, crab, shrimp, and oysters. Then, to introduce a dash of fun and mystery to soften the intensity of the negotiations, the remaining courses are a progression of surprise dishes in the California-French style that Dodd favors. He may prepare a delicate Dover sole, New Zealand baby lamb, or a seasonally inspired dish using herbs and spices from the hotel’s famous gardens. If predictability better suits your agenda, Chef Dodd is prepared to customize the evening’s meal to your liking.

Between the setting and the cuisine, your inconspicuous dinner at Table One will be one you and your guests will remember fondly long after the ink has dried on the contract. Dinner is $115 per person and lunch is $70 per person, excluding wine, beverages, tax, and service charge.

Hotel Bel-Air, www.hotelbelair.com, 310.472.1211