Joachim Splichal and wife Christine, founders of The Patina Group in Los Angeles, are gearing up for the opening of not one, but two restaurants this month at Downtown Disney in Anaheim (see related story, page 21).
With the exception of Disney itself, Patina will be the only tenant out of 30 to have more than one facility at the high-profile shopping and entertainment complex wedged between Disneyland and the new Disney’s California. Adventure park. Patina is set to open a Naples Ristorante e Pizzeria and a Catal Restaurant is already open at Downtown Disney. But it didn’t start out that way.
Two years ago, Disney executives started recruiting top restaurateurs to take space in its new project. At that time, both Patina and New York-based Restaurant Associates were among those asked to build restaurants at Downtown Disney. Then, in November 1999, Restaurant Associates purchased Patina for a reported $40 million and retained the Splichals as operators of the business.
“I didn’t know anything would happen between us and Restaurant Associates,” said Joachim Splichal, Patina’s president. “We have had seven restaurant openings in the last nine months, and these are the last ones. So we look forward to getting them open and get back to running our business.”
The opening of the Downtown Disney eateries gives Patina a total of four OC restaurants, including three-year-old Pinot Provence in Costa Mesa and Tangata at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana. Patina recently took over operating the museum caf & #233; from West Coast Productions in Newport Beach.
Patina spent $4.8 million to build the new 320-seat Naples restaurant opening on Jan. 11 and $4.3 million to build Catal, an exclusive concept for Downtown Disney that opened Jan. 1.
The Naples restaurant, which features mosaic tile floors and a giant smoking replica of Pompeii’s famous Mount Vesuvius, features Corrado Gianotti, an Italian chef who ran the kitchen of Tutto Mare in Newport Beach.
Catal is a dual-concept, two-story restaurant. The downstairs portion is called Uva or “grape” in Spanish. This area serves a menu of tapas, or small servings of Spanish finger food that sell for $3 to $9, as well as a selection of 40 wines. The upstairs eatery offers a complete menu of Mediterranean cuisine.
Both restaurants offer meals in the $14 to $17 range for an average lunch and $24 to $32 for dinner with wine per person. Annual sales for the two restaurants are expected to be between $7 million and $10 million apiece.
“Catal (which stands for California Italian) is more of a family-style quality restaurant,” Christine Splichal said. “It’s all fresh food and a step up from what is offered at Disney parks. We are introducing fresh, Mediterranean food from Italy, Spain and France with an extensive wine list featuring mostly California wines with some Italian as well. We will serve 40 wines by the glass. We think it’s a plus, because parents who like to go want to have a nice meal with a glass of wine.”
The Splichal’s other OC restaurant, Pinot Pro-vence, which ranked No. 1 on Zagat’s 2001 directory of top restaurants, cost $2.2 million to build in 1997 and now produces annual sales of $3.7 million. The Bowers site is expected to bring in yearly sales of $1.8 million, bringing the group’s total OC sales to roughly $20 million to $25.5 million, or a third of the company’s overall $75 million projected 2001 sales.
Patina, best known for its flagship restaurant that opened in Los Angeles in 1989, now operates 21 high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York, museum caf & #233;s, and a catering business that serves clients such as the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Hollywood Bowl and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ Primetime Emmy Awards. In OC, the catering business does about $500,000 annually. Pinot employs 2,000 company-wide, including 330 in Orange County, once these two Disney locations are open.
“We always felt that OC was a very good market for us and with the opening of Pinot Provence, which was very successful, we have been integrated in the community,” Joachim Splichal said. “With Bowers, Catal and Naples we expect at least 20% to 25% of sales will come from the OC area.” n
