Chef Robert Bell

There is perhaps nothing more significant in our everyday lives than our relationship to food. After a glorious lifetime in the kitchen and hanging around dining rooms and dinner tables, PV’s very own chef and renowned restaurateur Robert Bell knows that what we eat reveals the connection food has to our identity and that’s why he continues to create and innovate cuisine.

Everything about eating, including what we consume, how we acquire it, who prepares it and who’s 
at the table, is a form of communication that is rich with meaning. Chef Bell, the owner and operator of Mama Terano restaurant, fully understands that our attitudes, practices, and rituals surrounding food are a window into our most basic beliefs about our world and ourselves and he is devoted to nurturing that idea with new and innovative food experiences.

“I’m a creative person, my mind is constantly going. Every book, every magazine, every menu, every picture it’s such a powerful force and inspiration. I am just lucky I get to focus on food,” says the man most people simply call the Chef.

He invents new recipes, rarely prepares the same dish twice and shares his love for and devotion to food and wine with the lucky residents of Palos Verdes every day at his Mama Terano restaurant, located on the Brick Walk.

Diners at Mama Terano experience authentic Italian cuisine along with inspired and unexpected dishes created by the Chef, for the moment. His latest ice cream sundae delights diners. “The sundae we have up now is called a Sicilian Sundae. It’s ice cream from Brooklyn called ooey gooey and then it has cherry sauce that I make with frozen cherries. Cherry spread, port wine, balsamic vinegar and a ton of black pepper. Then it has pistachio nuts, orange zest, cannoli filling and a pretzel.” He rattles off the recipe then laughs, “Sounds crazy but It’s so good.”

The restaurant’s warm and welcoming ambiance lends itself to that of an Italian family’s Brooklyn kitchen which is where it all began for Chef Bell more than six decades ago. Robert Bell was raised in Brooklyn and began his relationship with food and cooking in the real Mama Terano’s kitchen. His beloved grandmother Millie Terano brought Italian cooking into her Italian-American New York kitchen and inspired her grandson’s life passion.

“I watched my grandmother closely, but I always loved sitting around the table with fifteen or twenty people and just the dynamics of that. I always loved what was going on. Everyone talked about food. It was the most important thing. It’s what you shared, it’s what we love,” 
he says passionately.

The Chef believes there was never anything more important than food in his life. “Food holds the family together. I always loved Sunday dinner,” he remembers. “I loved my uncles and my aunts and my grandparents. I loved seeing everyone every week, after church. We would all arrive at my grandma’s and sit down and start eating at 2pm and we didn’t get up until like 7pm. That’s why I really wanted to cook,” he admits. His love for cooking started as a child but Chef Bell says he didn’t think of cooking as a profession until much later in life. There was no such thing as a cooking show or a celebrity chef; so Bell cooked for fun and friends while living in Hollywood during his twenties. He spent a dozen or so years in architecture and city planning before following his calling into the kitchen in 1976.

When an old poker pal asked the Chef if he’d be interested in drawing up a floor plan for a new restaurant the friend was opening in Hermosa Beach, events transpired and things quickly evolved. “I made him dinner. He freaked out over the food and he basically hired me on the spot to be his opening chef. I hadn’t ever cooked professionally before that, and I never looked back. Even to this day I say that was the luckiest thing for me. It changed my whole life, ” the Chef laughs.

Chef Bell’s popular and successful Cafe Courtney and later the famous Chez Melange established the Chef not only in the South Bay but in the greater Los Angeles area, as one of the most innovative food creators working today. He has spent countless hours giving back to his community and feels deeply rooted here.

“We were a big part of raising money for the Peninsula Education Foundation. Every year we did a dinner for ten in your home, we also started the sort of infamous Food and Wine Festival which Torrance Memorial has taken over, but we started it in about 1984 and raised probably millions of dollars for South Bay charities over those years and then we started something else called the Young Chefs of the South Bay and we would hold a contest and chefs from all over, like Wolfgang Puck, would come up and we’d taste the food and pick the winners and that was a big deal. We were always part of the South Bay and always wanted to pay the South Bay back for our business because we did quite well for a long time,” he says.

Well into his seventh decade the Chef just keeps looking forward and has big plans for the future. He is calling his next venture the Chameleon Social Club and he’s looking for a location and founding members who would later become board members. The private, members only club, similar to the popular dinner club concept, will be the culmination of the Chef’s more than 40 years in the business.

At the Chameleon Social Club, where changes will be the norm like the name implies, the Chef plans to share his wealth of experience with food, wine and hospitality. He expects to treat each member like a friend and make every food, beverage, event and activity decision with members in mind. “There’s really nothing like this in the South Bay. It’s for anyone that loves food and drink and camaraderie. That’s what it’s about,” the Chef says. That’s what it has always been about for Chef Bell.

In the late 1970’s he was living in Hermosa Beach when he met a wine broker named Michele who later became his wife. A new passion would inspire his move to Palos Verdes. He took up golf at the age of 45 and fell instantly in love with the game. “I was single. I was a Chef. I was well-known and the last place a single well-known guy would ever want to live would be in PV,” he says laughing. “But I wanted to join the Palos Verdes Golf Club so badly. So I bought a home. One of the very best things about the estates is the Palos Verdes Golf Club. It’s such a gem. It’s a great, great golf course and I feel so privileged to play,” says Chef Bell. Michele plays too, at least three days a week. The couple and their Border Collie Lucy love the life they have created.

In the late 1970’s he was living in Hermosa Beach when he met a wine broker named Michele who later became his wife. A new passion would inspire his move to Palos Verdes. He took up golf at the age of 45 and fell instantly in love with the game. “I was single. I was a Chef. I was well-known and the last place a single well-known guy would ever want to live would be in PV,” he says laughing. “But I wanted to join the Palos Verdes Golf Club so badly. So I bought a home.

One of the very best things about the estates is the Palos Verdes Golf Club. It’s such a gem. It’s a great, great golf course and I feel so privileged to play,” says Chef Bell. Michele plays too, at least three days a week. The couple and their Border Collie Lucy love the life they have created.

He’s had a special place in his heart for Palos Verdes since he was a young man living in Hollywood. “When I was 20 I had a Porsche Speedster. I used to drive with my girlfriend to Palos Verdes. It was so special. On Sundays we’d drive down, stop in San Pedro and have lunch at Ports O’ Call and then come back along the coast. It was very cool. Back in those days I dreamt that maybe someday I’d actually live here.” Just look at him now. Chef Robert Bell’s life of hard work and dedication is proof that dreams really do come true.