“Manhattan Beach-based Chef David LeFevre of Fishing with Dynamite, MB Post, The Arthur J and soon-to-be AttaGirl, a native of Madison, Wisconsin, developed his passion for cooking as a child by helping his Mother in the kitchen. He says, “I loved the food my mother made and realized that if I knew how to cook, I wouldn’t have to wait for someone else to cook for me.”” Chef David is one of the celebrity Host Chefs for the upcoming Manhattan Beach Food & Wine Festival in Manhattan Village set for the evenings of Friday, October 11th and Saturday evening, October 12th.
“In 2004, LeFevre was recruited as Executive Chef of the Water Grill, downtown Los Angeles’ seminal seafood restaurant. Under LeFevre’s six-year culinary leadership Water Grill earned a coveted Michelin star in 2007 and 2008, and further solidified its reputation as one of Los Angeles’ premier destination restaurants.”
“At his first restaurant Manhattan Beach Post (M.B. Post), LeFevre returned to his roots with a highly personal and soulful restaurant offering a more rustic menu of playful, artisanal dishes complemented by artfully crafted cocktails and small production wines. It launched in April of 2011. Culminating a whirlwind first year was M.B. Post’s selection as a semi-finalist for the 2012 James Beard Foundation Awards for Best New Restaurant, and LeFevre’s selection as a semi-finalist in the Best Chef Pacific category.”
“In 2013, LeFevre opened Fishing with Dynamite, a celebration of summers spent on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and SoCal’s vibrant beach communities. The cheerful, 32-seat restaurant is anchored by a lively oyster bar and features a menu of “old school” traditional seafood fare and “new school” dishes highlighting flavors from around the globe.”
“LeFevre opened his third Manhattan Beach Restaurant, The Arthur J in June of 2015. The Arthur J is a modern neighborhood steakhouse featuring a wood-fired grill and LeFevre’s own take on steakhouse favorites in addition to dishes inspired by his roots, travels and the best artisanal ingredients. The Arthur J pays tribute to the legendary hospitality of Arthur J. Simms – family patriarch of LeFevre’s partners Mike, Chris and Tom Simms – by welcoming guests into a stunning space evocative of a glamorous, 60’s Palm Desert getaway.”
Chef David is one of 50 accomplished chefs (25 each night) participating in the new Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival at Manhattan Village the evenings of Friday, October 11th and Saturday, October 12.
We reel in Chef LeFevre from his busy kitchens to join us.
Hey, there. It's Jet Tila, the emeritus host of the SoCal Restaurant Show and judge on Food Network's Cutthroat Kitchen with Alton Brown. You're listening to the very best in Food 411 on AMA 30 KLAA. And welcome back. It is the SoCal Restaurant Show, and we're here with you every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon right here on AMA 30 KLAA, the home of Angels Baseball 2024. And you can also catch us on the AMA 30 Angels app. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show. Welcome and we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Produce and West Coast Primates. Over the past few weeks, we've been previewing a brand new food festival that is coming to Manhattan Beach on Friday, October 11th and Saturday, October 12th. This is the Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival. Each night, 25 well-known prominent celebrity chefs are going to be presenting taste of their signature menu items. We're really excited about this event. The Careers Through Culinary Arts program is the charity beneficiary, which is very exciting to us. And if you're going to do a culinary event in Manhattan Beach and you don't have chef and restaurateur David LaFavor is part of it, it's just not going to be an event. You know Chef David's name from his Dynasty of Restaurants in Manhattan Beach, starting with Fishing with Dynamite, MB Post, the Arthur J, and soon to be At A Girl, which we want to hear about. We haven't had Chef David on the show in a while. I don't know why, but it is a pleasure to welcome Chef David LaFavor back to the show. Chef, good morning and welcome back. Good morning. How are you doing? David, I am doing really well. Now, I last saw you a few weeks ago because Josiah Citrin was celebrating the 20th anniversary of Malice in Santa Monica. A real special occasion because when Josiah embarked 20 years ago on the adventure that was Malice, no one was doing freestanding high-end destination dining restaurants. If they were done anywhere, they were done in luxury hotels and it was a loss leader to give the hotel some extra visibility and some sophistication. And it is nothing short of a miracle, Chef David, that not only did Malice succeed, but it is endured. So you're in the kitchen as part of one of the brigade of chefs that were presenting items and celebration of that. What was the item that you did from Malice? We did a take on a hush puppy, which is usually with crab in kind of a low-country yummy snack and we did it with a little bit, we tried to refine a little bit, we did it with some usually co-shoot with it and some king crab and we wrapped it in a she-so leaf. But it was super exciting to be involved with, you know, celebrating Chef Josiah's 25 years in Santa Monica and, I mean, look, 25 years for a restaurant, especially at that high level of caliber and look Josiah did it on his own. He doesn't have a bunch of partners and he started, you know, in his 20s, so it was just, it was exciting to be part of that and be just with a group of really amazing chefs. David, it really was an incredible afternoon and the food that everyone was turning out was pretty incredible and the libations that they were serving, you know, the wines. There was some wonderful sake and it took over every square inch of the restaurant. So I mean, again, you were cooking all of them in the kitchen, so you know, so definitely great fun and, you know, we look forward to a future anniversary and maybe sometime the 20th or 25th anniversary of one of the restaurants in your little empire. David, I first came to know you when you were the executive chef at the acclaimed Water Grill in downtown LA and back in those days, that was the flagship and the only Water Grill. They have branched since then and it's a little, the concept's a little different than it was back then, but back then that was really the only high-end seafood restaurant in downtown LA and one of the most acclaimed restaurants in downtown LA share a little of that experience with us if you will. Well, it was great, you know, I had been working for, at that time, I'd been working for Charlie Trotter for about 10 years in Chicago and I had gotten experience of really learning how to run the high-end kitchen and how to, you know, gather the troops of a brigade and get through service every day and really focused on quality for a very long time in my career. And I got recruited to be the chef at Water Grill in downtown Los Angeles, which, you know, was known as one of the best seafood restaurants, not only in Los Angeles, but kind of on the West Coast. Absolutely. Yeah, and it was my first opportunity to be the executive chef of, you know, of a restaurant and King Seafood did an amazing, they are incredibly committed to developing their executives. And I knew that going and working at that restaurant that already had a very stellar reputation, not only was I going to be able to go into a situation that was, you know, teed up for me, set up for success, but also that I was going to learn a lot from the group of executives in that company. I was going to learn a lot about operating a restaurant, which, you know, is a very important part of owning your own business, and my long-term goal was to own my own business. So that was a step for me to go in and learn operations and follow, you know, the incredible chef Michael Simarusti. He was a good friend of mine and he had been at that restaurant for a long time. So it was a great opportunity for me and with the mentorship I had at that company through Matt Stein and Jeff King and Sam King and Adam Bassick and a bunch of great guys. I was able to really learn how to operate a restaurant, which set me up for opening up my own business. Now, that led to fishing with Dynamite in Manhattan Beach, kind of your first peg in Manhattan Beach, but a much more modest restaurant. Tell us a little bit about that, if you will. Yeah, you know, we had opened up Manhattan Beach Post in 2011 and then a little space next door to Manhattan Beach Post became available and it was a tiny restaurant on the corner, about 20 feet away from Manhattan Beach Post. And I really saw that tiny space of, you know, I thought to myself, you know, what could we do in that in this small little tiny restaurant? It's a small footprint, you know, there's 32 seats. And I really thought that doing a very quirky, kind of unique seafood and raw bar there would be a number one. I was very, it was dear to my heart. I love seafood and, you know, we thought there's not a lot of, there weren't a lot of great seafood restaurants in that area. Whether you went inland and east or if you went south or you went north. I mean, it was like a 10 mile radius of not, you know, maybe not 10 miles, five or six miles of not really having a true raw bar. So we thought, let's take this little space and let's take a little bit of East Coast nostalgia and mix it with this west coast vibe and take this feel of a lobster shack meets, you know, meets a Southern California. We came up with fishing with Dynamite, which has, you know, a little six seed oyster bar with a shellfish and great oysters from all the world around the world. And then, you know, about another 12 to 15 seafood items that people love, whether those are lobster rolls or whether that Ceviche, sashini, chowder, octopus. And so we opened that in 2013 and it's really amazing when you have a small restaurant like that. The personality, you know, it might be a small, but mighty restaurant, a little engine that could. But the following that we have with it is really tremendous. I think people, it really resonated with our guests in Manhattan Beach and, you know, I can be, I can be in Houston or New York and people will ask, you know, what are the restaurants you have. And as soon as I say, one of them fishing with Dynamite, they all say, "Oh, I've heard of that one." Well, David, you know, your customer base is extremely loyal. Now, before we run out of time, you have a new restaurant that is on the horizon called Attagirl. What can you tell us at this point because curious minds want to know? So, yeah, we have a new restaurant called Attagirl coming up based off of coastal Mediterranean food. So if you think of coastal Spain, France, Italy, Greece, even North Africa, you know, that's the same kind of climate that we have in Southern California. We've got healthy proteins driven with skewers and we've got our own petas and lafa and focaccia. We've got our own spreads and great skewered meats and seafood, spinach pie. So really, you know, living in Southern California, especially in the South Bay, that beach community, that's food that you really crave. And it makes sense. There's like five different kind of Mediterranean climates in the world in Southern California as one of them. We paired up with one of the chefs that's been with us for a very long time and has been extremely successful with us and who is just an amazing person and incredibly intelligent and incredibly talented chef. Her name is Alice Mai. So she's actually one of our partners and she has ownership in the restaurant. And so we should be opening up this late fall, early winter. We've got a little bit delayed with some of the permitting that's been going on in Hermosa Beach. But we're moving on and we should be able to be opening up pretty soon in the next couple of months. Well, David will definitely be following that now. For the upcoming Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival, the evenings of Friday, October 11th and Saturday, October 12th, are you participating one night or both nights? Tell us that, if you will. Yeah, we're excited. We're going to be participating in Manhattan Beach. When I moved to Manhattan Beach in 2005, I moved from downtown Los Angeles and a friend invited me out to Manhattan Beach and I drove out there and I came over the hill and I looked down in the ocean and I said, "Oh my God, if I'm moving from Chicago to the Los Angeles area, I should move from downtown to Manhattan Beach." It was just beautiful seeing the ocean and that area. And so I've lived down there since 2005 and it's a special special place. I've traveled and worked all around the world from Australia to Southeast Asia to Japan to Europe and no discussion. And it's a special place and with the food that my partners and I have done at the restaurants that we've done with a lot of the other people in the South Bay, I'm really glad that Shelby decided to start a Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival. So it's coming up in October, second week in October and we're going to be involved. Look, there's amazing chefs from all over. I mean, you've got Antonio LaFasa from downtown. You've got Susan Fenniger, you've got Michael Reed, Michael Hong, Geno Angelini, people from all over. Chris Cosentino, Brendan Collins is going to be there. David Schlosser, Jackson Call, Bregarcia, Dominique Krenn, Aaron Sanchez. I mean, these are chefs that are, you know, not only just, not only great chefs, but I mean from all over, all over. So it's going to be a really amazing festival. I mean, number one with these festivals is you've got to be able to have the connections and the rapport and the relationships with great chefs to have them come in and to really enjoy it. And we're really excited, you know, not only excited to be part of it, but, you know, for somebody that has five different restaurants down in the South Bay, really excited for all those chefs to come down to Manhattan Beach and to see the South Bay and to visit, you know, in our little special area for, even if it's for that weekend. David, we need to leave it there for ticket information. It is Manhattan Beach Food and Wine.com Manhattan Beach Food and Wine.com. One of the participating chefs in the upcoming Manhattan Beach Food and Wine Festival, the evenings of Friday, October 11th and October 12th. Always a pleasure catching up with chef David Lefavor and we'll be following the progress of "Add a Girl." You are listening to the SoCo restaurant show. Yes, when we return, as promised chef Andrew Grull, we're proudly presented by Melissa's World Variety Produce. I promise, we'll be right back. [MUSIC PLAYING]
