Table scene: new dining spots open in Century City.

THERE'S one question high on the agenda of all the entertainment industry power players that have recently moved into Century City:

Where are we going to do lunch?

Hoping to provide the answer to that question are a handful of new dining spots with impressive culinary chops: Craft, Cuvee, Deli-Boys, Habanero Grill, Piknic and the Stand.

The same things that lured the entertainment companies have drawn the eateries. The rents, while relatively high, are less steep than Beverly Hills. The average Century City office rents at about $4 a square foot and retail space is about $5 a foot, triple-net.

Katie Grieco, general manager and vice president of operations for Craft, said Tom Colicchio's company considered Beverly Hills and Sunset Boulevard before settling on Century City.

"In some places we looked at, the rents were a little higher and in some places we were concerned whether there would be enough parking," said Grieco. "Neither is an issue here."

Among the things that could be, at least initially, are West Coast culinary preferences.

"Opening restaurants away from your home base is a little more risky," said Grieco, whose New York-headquartered establishment has opened Dallas and Las Vegas sites. "People in L.A. care a lot about their fitness and what they look like, and we are prepared to accommodate as best we can."

Creative Artists Agency Inc. was the first of Century City's new arrivals, pulling up stakes at its longtime 90210 digs to move into the expanded campus at 2000 Avenue of the Stars. First Look Media Inc., Comerica Entertainment Group and International Creative Management Inc. have since joined them; law firm Barnes Morris Klein Mark Yorn Barnes & Levine LLP and Fidelity Investments made the move, too.

The campus expansion at the 12-story, 790,000-square-foot building on Avenue of the Stars is underway, adjacent to the two Century Plaza towers, along Century Park East. The towers, currently being reworked, are 44 stories each and a total of 2.3 million square feet.

The bulk of the dining establishments will be located along a landscaped park at 2000 Avenue of the Stars and called, appropriately enough, the Promenade of Cafes. It's set to open next year, as is the restaurant Craft, which will stand alone across the courtyard.

There will be plenty of daytime customers for the slew of ground-floor eateries. More than 10,000 employees will be working in the Century Plaza Towers and 2000 Avenue of the Stars, according to Patti Gilbert, the vice president of brokerage services at developer Trammell Crow Co. There will be an estimated 40,000 workers, residents and hotel occupants within a one-mile radius, she added.

Piknic will be modeled after the recently opened Playa Vista restaurant of the same name. Orit Greenberg, the owner of Judi's Deli in Beverly Hills, and a former co-owner of the Beverly Boulevard hotspot Toast Bakery Cafe, owns it.

Dodi Maghsoudi, owner of Cuvee and Habanero Grill, said he's planning to serve breakfast and lunch but is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward dinner service for the first four or five months of business.

Fifty percent of sales at Cuvee's existing Robertson Boulevard location are in salads. That's about 500 people a day consuming about 600 pounds of lettuce a week, he estimates, numbers that he expects to exceed at his 2,600-square-foot lobby site in Century City.

For the evening and out-of-town crowd, the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza is planning to open a swanky lobby bar and lounge. The concept is an interior designed to look like the outdoors, and a patio designed to look like the indoors.

The influx of entertainment firms actually represents a renaissance of sorts for Century City, which had been something of an industry hub through the 1990s. But when the Shubert Theater closed in 2002 and ABC migrated to the Wait Disney Co.'s Burbank hub from its ABC Entertainment Center digs, it lost some of its luster. When Metro Goldwyn Mayer Inc. downsized its operations after it was purchased by a group of private equity firms, Sony Corp. and Comcast Corp., last year, the high vacancy rates in the area became a concern.

BY ANNE RILEY-KATZ

Staff Reporter