Restaurateurs have got reservations about smoking ban proposed by city councilman.

Restaurateurs have got reservations about smoking ban proposed by city councilman

The specter that laid-back Los Angeles may soon have the country's toughest restaurant smoking ban has already got the city's culinary kings steamed.

Now they are fighting back - and taking reservations.

More than 100 L.A. eateries joined forces Aug. 1 to fight the ban, forming Restaurants for Sensible Voluntary Policy (on smoking), or RSVP. Members ranged from the well-heeled to the trendy: Spago, Jimmy's, and Ma Maison to the Hard Rock Cafe, Hamburger Hamlet and the Sidewalk Cafe.

"It's a good idea to prevent smoking in public places, but it's unfair to single out the restaurants and not bars and bowling alleys," says RSVP member Mary Rockenwagner, who co-owns and runs Rockenwagners, a high-end French eatery in Venice. "I think it's a bad idea to do something in only one city. People will move their business out of the city."

Proposed by Los Angeles city councilman and former smoker Marvin Braude, the law would outlaw all smoking in Los Angeles restaurants because of concern for the health risks of second-hand smoke. City law already requires restaurants to designate non-smoking areas.

For restaurateurs like the 30-year-old Rockenwagner, though, the Braude proposal brings back memories of Beverly Hill's short-lived total smoking ban of 1987.

"The Beverly Hills law used to be a big subject among restaurant owners," says Rockenwagner, a Chicago native who moved here six years ago. "People were losing as much as 25 percent of their business because of it."

RSVP's formation comes just six weeks after the California Restaurant Association said it would support the ban if it applied to all public places in the state, a move Braude said was a clever delaying tactic.

PHOTO : Rockenwagner: Feels singled out