Striking a French Note ~ February 4, 2001
Berkeley, ever the oddity, has restaurants that wouldn’t exist
elsewhere in the Bay Area. Take La Note. The restaurant happened by
chance. Dorothee Mitrani-Bell was neighbors with a woman who was looking
for a space for her jazz school. She found it on heavily trafficked
Shattuck Avenue, and downstairs there was room for a restaurant. As
Mitrani-Bell recalls 3-1/2 years later, “She said, Come see this
space! I’d just had a baby and had no money.” So against
her better judgment and weakened by homesickness for her native France,
Mitrani-Bell opened La Note.. ... As she says, she is “total French.”
Raised in Paris, she spent a lot of time in old castles that her parents
renovated. “We always lived in ruins and would have long meals
in the freezing cold.” Still, Mitrani-Bell grew to love great
food and design and went off to study architecture at the University
of California Berkeley. “La Note is my opportunity to express
my nostalgia for France"...