FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Joan McCraw, jMc@ArtsTableSM.com, 310.560.6920
ART’S TABLE, NEW AMERICAN RESTAURANT & WINE BAR
SOFT OPENS ON MONTANA AVE & 10th STREET IN SANTA MONICA
SANTA MONICA, CA—Friday, March 21, 2014—Mark Verge, home grown
Santa Monica entrepreneur, and owner of Westside Rentals, award-winning craft cocktail bars,
restaurants, and hotels, and chef Mark Mittleman, a native New Yorker; now happy-in-LA
transplant, known for his creatively rendered take on classic American cuisine, would like you to
join them at Art’s Table, their New American eatery, soft opened this week at Montana Avenue
and 10th Street, ten blocks from Santa Monica Bay, on the city’s western border.
Art’s Table is named in memory of Mark Verge’s father, Art Verge, a respected waterman and
longtime Santa Monica educator and historian. Art’s promises the graciousness of Old World
hospitality in a New World food order influenced by Chef Mittleman’s classical cooking style,
world food view, appreciation for Santa Monica market fresh seasonal produce and purveyors, and
adherence to cooking with the finest-quality and healthful ingredients available. His quest is to
create intensely satisfying food, simply and elegantly presented, in a casual neighborhood setting,
catering to a community of well-traveled palates, where friends and loved ones gather and savor
time together.
Mittleman’s flavor-forward cuisine is a nod to Americana and the expansive tastes of the Santa
Monica neighborhood Art’s Table serves. Soft opening Day and Night menus are populated with
delicious dishes like the Chicken Oyster Po’boy sandwich, created from the tender bits of
delectable dark-oyster-shaped-meat that lie on either side of a whole chicken’s backbone. The
cornmeal crusted organic chicken oysters are tossed in house-made habanero mayo and paired with
bacon chips and sliced pickles on a French roll. The Po’boy is topped with finely shaved raw
brussels sprouts slaw served with potato strings.
Art’s Table offers a healthy selection of salad options, from a lemon dressed kale salad with
Marcona almonds, and Manchego cheese, to Mittleman’s version of a Cobb salad with poached
chicken, pancetta and truffle cheese. He fills out the salad section of his menu, with a baby beet &
quinoa salad, a Greek corn salad and an Albacore tuna option. Larger entrée dishes include seared
local Sea Bass with jasmine scented baby carrots and roasted kabocha squash, or a 10oz hanger
steak with onion crisps, sautéed spinach and both a chimichurri and béarnaise sauce.
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Chef Mittleman has commandeered kitchens at Prana Café, West Restaurant at the Angeleno
Hotel, Leo and Lilly, and The Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel, and opened, refreshed and
shaped operations and menus at myriad Southland restaurants as consulting chef and on stints as a
private chef. Mark Verge retained him last July to review operations and refresh the menu at The
OP Café, his popular local diner on Ocean Park at 32nd Street. Business spiked with the addition of
the chef’s healthy twist on OP’s traditional California breakfast and lunch fare. When the Montana
Ave restaurant opportunity presented itself, a partnership was born.
General Manager, David Fleisher, former GM of Freddie Smalls Kitchen & Bar and Seven Grand,
the premium whiskey outpost in downtown LA, is overseeing operations and staff management.
Mittleman, the youngest of four in a traditional Italian American family, learned to love food and
cooking tied to his Mother’s and Grandmother’s apron strings. He was schooled in the art of food
preparation, handed down in the making of ancestral recipes, by devout family matriarchs who
taught him patience and the indelibly etched food=love lessons that flavor Art’s modern American
menu and the chef’s “guests-first” dining philosophy today.
In 2001, at 27 years old, Mittleman opened Fauna, a family-owned, fine dining restaurant in
Aquebogue, a small Hamptons-close community in eastern Long Island overlooking Flanders Bay,
set among thriving vineyards and family owned farms, a fertile proving ground and endless supply
of fresh inspiration for the mash up of classic dishes and exotic specials the inventive chef created
to nourish the neighborhood and discerning diners on weekend treks to Hamptons retreats and the
North Fork to taste local wines. After a successful four year run, he was lured west by the
opportunity to work as Sous Chef at The Polo Lounge at the venerable Beverly Hills Hotels then in
the midst of a menu makeover.
MONTANA AVE REVIVAL
Art’s Table’s reimagined corner-spot occupied by Babalu Restaurant & Bakery, a fixture on
Montana Avenue for the last 27 years, is still undergoing transformation to a refined rustic-meets–
post-industrial aesthetic crafted by acclaimed hospitality designer Ricki Kline. The one story
building is blessed with good bones and great light streamed through original transom and singlehung wooden windows. Folding French doors fronting Montana Ave are open when blue skies
beckon to accommodate the cool Santa Monica Bay sea breezes synonymous with the oceanfront
community.
Beachy vintage style striped awnings shield diners and guest dogs at Art’s Table’s outdoor
seating along 10th Street. Contrasting hues of warm and cool greys demarcated by stained steel blue
crown and wainscoting anchor and top the 1922 building, adding a sophisticated flair expressed
inside and out. Exterior neon signage will be added by month’s end prior to Art’s Table’s official
opening.
Art’s Table’s dining room offers a movable feast of square shaped white oak topped tables for
parties of two and four. Banquette seating and the communal Captain’s Table can be reserved,
accommodating large groups up to 10. Custom-crafted rolled steel industrial LED light sculptures
with interior armature coated in gold foil float below the bright red planked-wood dining room
ceiling, and affix to the charcoal grey cement-skinned wall, cast a subtle reflective glow and wash
muralist TMAC’s hand-lettered imprint: “Never stifle a generous impulse.” in soft light.
The intimate, freshly minted, L-shaped upstairs barroom walled in Novelty wood siding, mirroring
the look of Santa Monica’s early Arts and Craft bungalows, features bar and table seating and offers
a rotating list of two dozen select wines available by the glass and bottle, and four California wines
on tap. Favored bottled beers compliment eight artisanal crafts on tap, showcasing regional
breweries.
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Kline, a multiple AIA Restaurant & Lounge Design Awards recipient, and Los Angeles
Conservancy Preservation Award honoree, designed several of LA’s most populated nightlife
venues, including Seven Grand, Honeycut, The Varnish, Cole’s, and Las Perlas , et al, co-owned
by Mark Verge, Art’s Table proprietor, and Cedd Moses, his partner in 213, a downtown Los
Angeles based real estate and hospitality development company. Art’s Table brand identity was
designed and illustrated by Dave Stolte, and conceptualized in concert with creative director and
strategist, Joan McCraw.
For updates on Art’s soft opening, follow us on Facebook at www.facebook/ArtsTableSM,
or visit: ArtsTableSM.com.
ART’S TABLE, 1002 Montana Ave, Santa Monica, CA, 90403, 310. 395.2500
Soft Opening Hours: Weekdays at 11a till 10p. Weekends: 10a – 10p.
General Manager, David Fleisher. Executive Chef & Managing Partner: Mark Mittleman.
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ABOUT ART’S TABLE
The Good Times Are Now.
-Art
Art’s Table aspires to embody the generous spirit and character of it’s namesake,
longtime Santa Monica educator and historian of the city, Art Verge, whose family
roots date back to Santa Monica’s Marquez Rancho days.
Dr. Verge personified hospitality. Everyone was welcome at Art’s Table. There’s
nothing he loved more than cooking up a meal for old friends and new, opening a
cold libation, ensuring your glass was refreshed, and celebrating life around the
Verge family table, at the Euclid Avenue hacienda, savoring the moments, big or
small with loved ones.
The Verge family and Chef Mittleman invite you to pull up a chair, feast on Art’s
fresh delicious food, carefully prepared for your enjoyment, and toast to good times
as we build on Art’s traditions and celebrate new ones. Salud!