It’s a reunion every night at the “Vanderpump” establishments in Los Angeles. By Naomi Fry Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker; Source photographs from Bravo / Getty In 1998, a salt-and-pepper-haired occasional actor named Guillermo Zapata opened the restaurant SUR on a quiet block of Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood. Serving dishes from Zapata’s home country of Argentina, it was initially a modest spot—a spare white room with fewer than a dozen tables. But in 2005, looking to expand the restaurant, Zapata teamed up with the restaurateurs Lisa Vanderpump and Ken Todd, a married couple who had relocated from London to Los Angeles. Todd was a self-made businessman with a stiff corona of beige curls, and Vanderpump was a high-cheekboned beauty and onetime actress who, in the mid-eighties, starred in two music videos for the New Romantic pop group ABC. The couple had owned more than twenty restaurants, bars, and clubs throughout the years. But SUR, which they transformed into a cavernous, vaguely Moorish-themed lounge, was their crown jewel. People would journey to L.A. just to dine there. |
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