Fifty Sixty's Sara Johannes Lands High in LA

Sara Johannes

​While all the recent dining news has revolved around chef departures -- Pegasus News' Teresa Gubbins, who deserves some sort of spa treatment this weekend, scored a scoop trifecta with the revelations that Tiffany Derry, Sharon Hage and Dan Landsberg were all moving on -- our sister paper in Los Angeles today is reporting on where former Five Sixty exec Sara Johannes landed.

Johannes, whose new assignment was rather vague when her transfer was announced, is now working as chef de cuisine for WP24, Wolfgang Puck's relatively new restaurant on the 24th floor of a Ritz-Carlton near the Staples Center. Five Sixty ought to have been a good training ground: The LA eatery specializes in high-end, Chinese-leaning cuisine.

But that's not what impressed LA Weekly critic Jonathan Gold, whose review was published this week. Although Gold declares WP24's shrimp toast "the best you have ever had," he concludes: "The farther the cooking strays from the Chinese ideal, the better it seems to be."