City of Angles

She is 48, and her daughter is a famous beauty, but Bebe Buell and her amazing cheekbones still turn heads as she breezes into Asia de Cuba at the Mondrian. She has just done Howard Stern’s show and is on her way to Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect,” promoting her rock ‘n’ roll memoir, “Rebel Heart.”

For two hours, we sit transfixed as Buell talks about some of the pre-MTV generation’s favorite love gods. While we can only dream about them, Buell says she has known Todd Rundgren, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, and Steven Tyler in the biblical sense. “Mick, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson are like perfect practitioners of love. God put them on this planet to make love to women,” Buell writes in the book, published earlier this month by St. Martin’s Press.

Buell, who was an inspiration for the Penny Lane character played by Kate Hudson in the movie “Almost Famous,” insists she was never a groupie, nor is she now cashing in with a kiss-and-tell tome. “People go, ‘Bebe, is this a kiss-and-tell book?’ and I go, ‘No. It’s a kiss-and-learn book,”’ she said, laughing.

She’d like to set the record straight on one thing: “I don’t hate Rod Stewart. I think he’s an incredible talent, funny, darling. Just didn’t make a good boyfriend.”

So, who was she most impressed with meeting? “Groucho Marx. [He] was probably one of the most stunning people. And Salvador Dali. My memory of meeting people like that .... Those were the really monumental. When I met Groucho Marx, I had butterflies in my stomach. And I met him at a Led Zeppelin party, which is ironic.”

We’ll leave the dishy details up to your imaginations. As for the gentlemen in question, they’d never kiss and tell.

Serving Up Justice

Was justice served when a man climbed over the left-field wall and dropped court papers at the feet of Yankee left fielder David Justice during the ninth inning at Sunday’s Angels-Yankees game? Depends on who’s doing the talking.

Famed palimony lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, who put himself through law school more than 40 years ago by working as a legal process server, says yup, Justice was served. “I think it’s going to stick,” he told us.

Sure, the papers fluttered to the turf out there in left field, but the important thing is that Justice knew what was going on, said Mitchelson, lawyer for the woman who filed a palimony suit against the ballplayer.

Apex Attorney Services’ Jesus Ozaeta jumped the fence, walked up to the left fielder and said, “Justice, I am serving you.” That’s all it takes, said Mitchelson, adding that Justice had been dodging four of the company’s process servers for three days before reaching for the papers in left field.

Mitchelson doesn’t take no for an answer, and has a flair for the dramatic. This is a guy who once hired a helicopter crew to land on Marlon Brando’s front lawn to serve papers in a custody case.

His client, Nicole Foster, the mother of 20-month-old David Justice Jr., claims Justice broke his promise to take care of her for life. Court papers say she and Justice became engaged April 4, 1999; the boy was born that December. They broke up in early 2000.

Justice, who since has married someone else, has denied making any promises. His lawyer, Dennis Wasser, called the ballpark ambush “a stunt” and said he hadn’t decided whether or not to file a court challenge. Instead, Wasser said, he will try to convince a federal judge to toss out the case because it should have been filed in Ohio.

“It’s always a stunt with Marvin,” Wasser said.

Pressure Cooker

Brooke Williamson, the executive chef at Zax, cooked last week for one of the toughest crowds in the world: New York’s food critics. Williamson, 23, was invited to whip up a little something at the James Beard House, an honor bestowed upon only the nation’s finest chefs. The James Beard Awards are, after all, the foodie world’s Oscars.

Some of us might have choked. But Williamson knows about cooking under pressure. That’s what got her the job at Zax.

Just one year ago, Williamson was worried about whether her youth would prevent her from winning the Zax job. But there’s no arguing with her background; Williamson trained with California cuisine co-founder Michael McCarty of Michael’s restaurant in Santa Monica and Ken Frank, formerly at the Fenix in West Hollywood. So she decided to “audition” by cooking a meal for Zax owners Chris and Chantal Schaefer.

At the time, Williamson was considering an offer from Campanile. But she hoped to lead her own kitchen. “It was a challenge and I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it,” she said.

And so, she invited the Schaefers to a private lunch at Michael’s when the place was closed--with McCarty’s blessing, of course. Her older sister, Jessica, filled in as waitress. Williamson “blew us away,” recalled Chris Schaefer, who hired her the next day.

Here’s the five-course meal that won Williamson the job: For starters, heirloom tomato salad with fresh marinated anchovies, followed by stuffed figs with prosciutto and arugula. For the main course, rouget, a French fish dish, on sweet corn orzo with sweet onion sauce and braised beef cheeks with monkfish. The meal’s finale: vanilla bean panna cotta with strawberries and peppermint oil.

Dear Diary

The late Richard Burton’s diary, filled with his deepest thoughts about his first year of married life with Elizabeth Taylor, is missing.

The diary was among items lent to the BBC by the actor’s widow, Sally, but it wasn’t among the items returned to her in March. Scotland Yard has been called in to investigate, and theft is strongly suspected, according to wire reports. The journal, written in 1965, had been kept in a locked cupboard at the BBC’s television center in London. Burton married his “Cleopatra” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” co-star twice--in 1964 and 1976. He died in 1984.

Sightings

Gary Sinise, chatting with Ed Harris after Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Malibu Catholic Church . . . Gabrielle Reese, leaning into the black-and-white and chatting with an L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy outside Coogie’s restaurant in Malibu . . . Tobey Maguire, Josh Hartnett, Bon Jovi, Seal and Sheryl Crow taking in the Radiohead show at the Hollywood Bowl.

Times staff writers Louise Roug and Gina Piccalo contributed to this column. City of Angles runs Tuesday-Friday. E-mail: [email protected].