Top Chef Alumni Newsletter

Is Michael Voltaggio’s New Restaurant Coming Downtown?

Photo: Tatiana Arbogast

Last we’d heard, Top Chef victor Michael Voltaggio said he was looking “west of Downtown” while considering where to place his first solo restaurant, the one just about everyone is foaming at the mouth to try and begging for a table scrap of information on. Voltaggio’s westward leanings came into question yesterday when Eater spied a line in a wine event’s press release saying that Blue Danube Wine will be a part of “the next downtown LA venture of BRAVO Top Chef Michael Voltaggio.” Was the cat let out out of the bag here, or is Kat just pouncing on some red herring?

We spoke with one of Voltaggio’s reps this morning, who says,” Let’s just say that announcement was NOT fact-checked…although planting an announcement in someone else’s press release is deviously brilliant, I can’t take credit for that.”

So wait, does that mean there are NO plans for Voltaggio to open a Downtown restaurant? The reply was “To be completely honest, a location has just not been confirmed.” We don’t quite have the Rosetta Stone of PR-speak down, but it appears to not really be a “no,” nor a “yes,” but somewhere elusively in-between. Guess we’ll have to stay on the case, binoculars, box of doughnuts, and Thermos of coffee in our laps.

This Just In [Eater]

Is Michael Voltaggio’s New Restaurant Coming Downtown?