Tesla somehow built the 10,000,000 square foot, thoroughly modern Texas Giga electric car factory in two years. Two years! Kind of seems like Men in Black don't it? Or for you Trekkies: Scalosian Speed.

Similarly, Malibu Kitchen (RIP) closed on December 4, 2022 - and there was wailing and moaning and rending of clothes - from Bill but also from the thousands of foodies, devotees and acolytes who had become addicted to the baked goods and sangwiches and society over 23 years. 

That location was gutted and shuttered and papered off like a combination of Boo Radley and Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and stayed that way for one year and 8 months plus.

Very mysterioso, inspiring citizens to wonder: “What goes on in there?” A fair thing to wonder, because the place stayed shuttered through an entire summer of 2023 in a tourist town in which summer is where you make your cake.

Shuttered through the summer of 2023 and the rainy winter of 2023/2024 and well into the summer of 2024 - inspiring rumors they were having trouble with Malibu permitting - in a town where some say you need an Environmental Impact Report to burp.

And then kinda like Willy Wonka appearing from his chocolate factory, on Tuesday August 27th - one year, eight months and 23 days after Malibu Kitchen shuttered -  the paper came off the windows and Scott’s Malibu Market opened for business.

There was some rejoicing and much curiosity: What goes on in there?

As someone who spent many many many hours hanging about at Malibu Kitchen, thinking and writing and wondering where the years went, it wouldn’t be too hard to write a book about the good, the bad and the tasty: Burrito fights and cinnamon buns, Seinfeld and Leno, meatloaf cupcakes, the weekend “Valibu” car show feat. vintage and modern stinkpots noise - and air-polluting the 21 Miles of Scenic Beauty. Swimming fools and movie stars and the poo birds decorating Lambos and Maseratis whose owners were unwise enough to park under that tree.

Watch out for that tree! 

Lots of stories. If you spent any time there, you’ve got stories. The place was legend. Irreplaceable. 

Seinfeld and Leno and Lorraine Bracco and other expatriated New Yorkers/easterners loved the joint, an island of New York/east coast “Waddayawant?!?!?!!” rubbing up against the laid back “Haveaniceday!” West Coast politeness and manners.

East is east and west is west and the two met in swift collision at Malibu Kitchen.

Because Seinfeld was so often seen there - often with his collaborator Spike Feresten who wrote the Soup Nazi episode(s) of Seinfeld - the Unknowing and Easily Led suspected that the Soup Nazi character from Seinfeld was inspired by Bill.

Not true.

(I used to say - out of earshot of Bill but sometimes to his quietly smiling employees - that Malibu Kitchen’s slogan should be:

“Come for the food, stay for the ‘tude.”)

But that was the ‘tude. What about the food?

Bill insists, “It’s always all about the food.”

GALLERIE SUMPTUOSA DE MALIBU KITCHEN

Food, beautiful food. Jars of candy. A brimming cornucopia of Thanksgiving pies, crumb cake, caesar salads, food cases loaded with two dozen salads and meatloaf and Reubens and pulled pork and another two dozen scrumptious baked goods. Breakfast burritos and sandwiches dripping with cheese.
Mmm mmmm good. People came for the food, and the NIDPA vibe was just part of the show.

Malibu Kitchen was good, it was bad, it was nationwide. The joint became a mecca for car collectors vintage and futuristic from listening to Spike Feresten’s Car Radio podcast, and Malibu Kitchen also appeared in Seinfeld’s Cars and Coffee episode (feat. Michael Richards).

Good, bad, nationwide: Esquire Magazine’s Overly Specific Guide to Summer listed Malibu Kitchen right next to Angel’s Landing, Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon: “The Porch of the Malibu Kitchen at the Malibu Country Art: From this spot at the New York-style deli owned by Frank Sinatra’s tour manager - “the most misunderstood man in Malibu,” say some - you can see a eucalyptus with three species of heron nesting in it, all beside the wonders of… a parking lot. Sublime.”

So what has replaced the irreplaceable Malibu Kitchen? On August 29 I met with a Food Critic Who Shall Remain Anonymous (FCWSRA) for lunch to check it out.
Walking inside, it was clear why it took 15,168 hours to re-open the doors. There is zero sign of the cluttered, relaxed, charming, time-layered Malibu Kitchen. It’s like a Wild West Saloon was transformed into.. What? The British Museum?

Remember that TV show The Swan where women considered unattaractive or cursed with bad noses or crooked teeth were given complete makeovers and transformed into something new and beautiful. Well not that Malibu Kitchen was ugly or anything, but there was there was a similar swanning into something thoroughly modern, polished and 21st Century.

Think of Lawrence of Arabia when Jackson Bentley asks:

Jackson Bentley: "What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert?"

T.E. Lawrence: "It's clean."

The new Scott’s Malibu Market is clean… ship shape and Bristol fashion, pristine and shiny as a new penny inside. Now it’s polished concrete floors - the original slab that was under the wood - and a lot of very expensive refrigerators, display cases. A completely different experience from what was there before. 

Some like it, some don’t. But that’s how it goes. The 50/50 rule.

A different experience, but is it a better experience? Sorry Bill, but one of the things that bugged people about Malibu Kitchen was the ordering system (the I in NIDPA): Approaching the counter with a kind of Soup Nazi-customerish caution, longtimers and newcomers alike would order and sometimes Benny or other guys taking the order would turn and whip it up, leaving everyone else standing and fidgeting in line when they could have been sitting outside, talking story, trying not to stare at celebrities and/or breathe in Lambo fumes.

Not always, but sometimes. But that was part of the Malibu Kitchen experience. Homey. Old school. Stand in line with Seinfeld and Lorraine Bracco.

And there was sometimes a disconnect between the menu prices and the prices charged, and the whole hold on to your receipt at all costs system.

Scott’s Market is thoroughly modern with all the efficient mod cons of 21st Century food service tech. There’s two different counters - one for coffee and pastry, the other for sandwiches and salads - but you can order anything from either. Order from the “Hellohowareyawelcome!” smiling nice ladies at the cash register, pay, take a number and sit outside - no inside seating - and watch the world go by. Look for celebrities. Breathe in Lambo fumes.

On this day, there were lots of lights and sirens between Live Wire and First Bank. Jumped on the EBike to check it out and it appeared to be someone struggling with drugs, locked in a Hummer H3 with a lot of sheriffs and paramedics trying to word-pry him out. That went on for quite a while.

Forget it, Jake. It’s Malibu.

Back at the table, the FCWSRA received his order first, a breakfast burrito with bacon. 

To which I retorted, channeling some Vincent Vega shtick from Pulp Fiction: “That a $20 burrito? That’s a tortilla with eggs and potato and cheese and peppers and onions and avocado and salsa?”

The FCWSRA nodded.

I continued with the shtick: “They put bourbon in that?”

The FCWSRA chewed as he nodded no. “Bacon,” he shticked. “If I’m going to pay $20 plus tax for a burrito,  I want my bacon. Because bacon tastes goooooood.”

I argued: “The point of Mexican food is it’s meant to be inexpensive, right? Barato. That’s a $20 burrito? How is it?”

“It’s pretty fricking good,” the FCWSRA Vincent Vegaed. “I don’t know if it’s worth $24 with tax, but it’s pretty fricking good.”

I ordered what I used to call “The AC Special” back in the Malibu Kitchen days - in honor of a tall dignified athlete who played defense for the World Champion San Francisco Football 49ers: The AC Special was an H&H bagel with smoked salmon, a little bit of cream cheese, tomatoes, onions and capers. Yum.The food of my people.

Well my dad’s people anyway. I am what you might call a “semi-semite.”

The Bagel and Lox Sandwich from Scott’s Malibu Market promised a similar experience as the AC Special and one could only hope: Sliced Nova lox, cream cheese, fresh tomato & onions. What came out was a nice sesame bagel brimming with the lox and the cream cheese, but no capers. There was a little container of coleslaw and some pickles.

So, not the AC Special we all knew and loved, but still good. And maybe this will nudge them to include capers, because lox and bagel without capers is like a day without sunshine. 

(Reading this later, Scott said if you want capers with your bagel and lox, just ask.)

Malibu Kitchen had atmosphere. Ooodles of it. Positive and negative. Yin and Yang. If you spent any time there - and I spent a LOT of time there, you have stories. Here’s one: 

In a case of synchronicity, when Todd Phillips was living on Malibu Road two summers ago writing the sequel to Joker, he would come to Malibu Kitchen for a taste of NYC and was down to chat - although he was pretty tight-lipped about the sequel because as we all know, Hollywood is more secretive than the NSA.

At one point I asked if he had been watching The Offer, on Paramount, a mini-series about the making of The Godfather.

Phillips said he’d been offered the directing job for The Offer, but was too busy - to direct it, or even watch it: “What do you think?” Herr Direktor asked my opinion of The Offer.

I said, “It’s alright. Maybe a little cheesy. The best things in it are Miles Teller and Giovanni Ribisi.”

This was when the noisy, smoky Valibu car show thing was in full swing. It was too busy and noisy. Phillips had another masterpiece to write, then soon after he left to get back to it in peace and quiet, Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld sat down at the next picnic table, three feet away.

They were talking about The Offer, which Seinfeld had seen, but Leno hadn’t: 

“How is it?” Leno asked Seinfeld.

To which Seinfeld said: “It’s okay. The best things in it are Miles Teller and Giovanni Ribisi.”

So that was a cool bit of synchronicity, and one of many many many stories generated by the NIPAD atmosphere of Malibu Kitchen. An atmosphere that will be difficult to reproduce.

GALLERIE SUMPTUOSA DE SCOTT’S MALIBU MARKET

Atmosphere evolves. Atmosphere takes time. Scott’s Malibu Market hasn’t had time to evolve an atmosphere, although I must say, the soundtrack was nice on their third day of operation. It was like they somehow hacked the Boomer Spotify in my brain and played it back to me as I was eating with the FCWSRA and talking story: Free Falling, White Room, Best of My Love, American Pie, Whole Lotta Love, Harvest Moon.

Soul Hits of the 70s. No Frank Sinatra or Nilsson or Vince Guaraldi like the Malibu Kitchen days, but the place has only been open a week.

Soundtracks evolve. Atmosphere evolves. Menus evolve. They’re just getting started.

Malibu Kitchen had under a dozen employees working in front and in back. Scott’s seems to have a couple platoons, but they are led by Scott who came out to say hello. I found out his name is Scott Richter and he’s originally from Melville, New York, out on Long Island.

I wanted to grill him further but he had a business to run. So I Googled him and found his arc from Los Angeles to Malibu was detailed nicely nicely in Voyage LA.

I condensed all that to this: “He is a native New Yorker who worked at bakeries and delis as a kid. By 2012 he was selling insurance but didn’t dig it, so he applied for and won a chance to open a food stall at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg, Brooklyn - selling chicken burgers. From Smorgasburg he went west to grow with his passion and landed in Las Vegas, where he managed a high-volume place in a town with more food places than there are stars in the desert sky. Managing a high-volume restaurant on the Strip - learning from the bottom up. After two years he went farther west and helped Shake Shack open their flagship West Hollywood store, eight others around Los Angeles and one in London. After 3.5 years at Shake Shack he decided to go on his own.  He opened Spring St Cafe on the ninth floor of the Arts Building in DTLA. He opened in October of 2021, at the same time his wife was pregnant with their first child. And then Covid hit, four months into his new business: “We had to shut down the café for six weeks, just after finishing our best week of sales. Times were so uncertain, my new business was going 60 mph to zero, and I needed to figure out how I was going to be able to support my family.”

The Voyage LA story ended with that Covid cliffhanger, so I went back Friday morning the 30th to get the rest of the story. Walked up and they were playing New York, New York on the soundtrack, which was apropo to the ancien regime and the New Order. 

Inside at the bakery counter, I was like Howard Carter staring into King Tut’s Tomb, I saw “Wonderful things.” I was a fiend for the Malibu Kitchen cinnamon buns, but Scott’s Malibu Market cinnamon rolls looked pretty good. What caught my fancy were The Pastry I Can Neither Spell Nor Pronounce  - Kouign-amann - the size of land mines so I ordered one of those. 

The coffee girl was bright and smiley and didn’t break character when with a straight face I asked for: “A dark roast with 75% Brazilian beans, 25% Peruvian, ostrich milk and I want the Bitcoin symbol in the foam on the top.”

Coffee Girl didn’t bat an eye and apologized that she couldn’t accommodate that, but would I like a large or small cafe au lait"?

(Malibu Kitchen didn’t do mixed drinks, and served a straight cup of Peete’s coffee. So this is different but I will always feel like punching myself in the nose when I pay $5+ for a cuppa.)

I got the large and went outside to get the rest of the story from Scott Richter. I read parts of this to him and he said if I wanted capers with the lox and bagel: just ask.

He laid down the arc from his Covid-closed cafe in DTLA: “We survived Covid and got back up and running. But when the Koss leasing agents told me about this opportunity in Malibu, I went for it.” 
When I asked Scott rude questions about rent and the cost of gutting and retrofitting the place, he deflected and said: “Hey, listen, that’s Sinatra.”

And indeed, the soundtrack was again tapping Bill’s Playlist: Sinatra in the morning.

Scott swung the doors open on Tuesday, August 27 and because there is no such thing as a small business, he is likely to put in the 12-hour, seven days a week schedule that Bill did with Malibu Kitchen for many many years.

(I’ve often said the Jewish people invented Shabbat so they wouldn’t work themselves to death).

People passed by and wished Scott mazel tov and gave suggestions for this and that: Maybe fresh bagels and smoked salmon available in bulk?

Scott’s Malibu Market will evolve, as businesses do. He is all too aware that he is following a uniquely tough act - good and bad. We talked about how important quality of product and service are in a town loaded with moneyed sophistos who know what’s good - and tourists looking for something special: Atmosphere. 

Scott understands all that, but this is a guy with a wife and two kids willing to take on the challenge of running a business in the Malibu: “A friend came by and told me, ‘You’re in the major leagues now.’” Scott said. “You started in Little League, then went to Varsity, then the farm team and now you’re in the Majors. I’ve worked for this since I was 14.”

EVERYBODY COMES TO BILLS - A RANDOM GALLERY