Walter & Margarita Manzke and the République tree

Walter Manzke is a Southern California native who built a classical résumé before he built a restaurant group: Joachim Splichal’s Patina, then international stages including Ferran Adrià and Alain Ducasse, then Relais & Châteaux work in the Bay Area, and then a run of consequential Los Angeles kitchens — Bastide and Church & State among them — plus a Carmel chapter (l’Auberge Carmel, Cantinetta Luca) in the early 2000s ^[1]. Margarita Manzke (née Margarita Kahng) was raised in the Philippines and trained on the pastry side at Patina, Spago, and Mélisse ^[1]. The two are a married chef partnership, and the through-line of everything they have opened is the braid of Walter’s French-and-California savory technique with Margarita’s world-class pastry — and, increasingly, her Filipino heritage surfacing in its own right.

The flagship is République, opened 2013 on Miracle Mile. The building is the load-bearing fact of the lineage: it is the 1929 Spanish-Colonial-Revival structure on South La Brea built for Charlie Chaplin, and it had been Campanile, Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel’s restaurant (1989–2012), with La Brea Bakery operating out of the same address ^[5]. When the Manzkes took the space, they inherited not just a famous room but a physical lineage — the bread-forward, daytime-into-dinnery, Cal-Med ambition that Campanile had stood for — and remade it as a French-Californian café-bakery-brasserie that runs from morning pastry through a serious dinner service. République is the tree’s trunk and its training ground; its kitchen and pastry program have moved a lot of cooks through.

Direct ventures

• République (Miracle Mile, 624 S La Brea Ave, 2013–present) — the flagship; Walter’s savory kitchen plus Margarita’s pastry, in the former Campanile / Charlie Chaplin building ^[1][5].
• Sari Sari Store (Grand Central Market, DTLA, 2017–2023) — the heritage project: a colorful, casual stall of Filipino silog rice bowls and halo-halo built around Margarita’s Pinoy upbringing, with the halo-halo slush base made from local fruit (peaches, strawberries) rather than syrup; it closed in December 2023 as the pandemic-era collapse of downtown office traffic took its customer base (the pita-and-street-food chain Miznon took over the stall) ^[2]. While it ran, it was the clearest statement that the Manzke story is not only “French technique” — it was a Filipina chef bringing her own table forward.
• Petty Cash Taqueria (Beverly Boulevard, 2013–2023) — a tacos-and-mezcal concept (a partnership with restaurateur Bill Chait), a step outside the French frame; it closed in October 2023 after a roughly ten-year run ^[1][3].
• Bicyclette (9575 W Pico Blvd, near Century City, 2021 – closed March 1, 2024) — a Parisian bistro; the most “straight French” of the ventures ^[1][3].
• Manzke (the tasting-menu room upstairs over Bicyclette, opened 2022 – closed March 1, 2024) — the tasting-menu room under the family name; it earned a Michelin star in 2023 before closing alongside Bicyclette ^[1][3].
• Wildflour (Philippines — Manila and Cebu) — a bakery-café group tied to Margarita’s Philippine connections, the Manila-side anchor of the tree ^[1].

Partial information: ownership splits across these (especially Petty Cash and Wildflour) are not fully documented in English-language press. After the 2023–24 closures — Petty Cash (Oct 2023), Sari Sari Store (Dec 2023), and Bicyclette and Manzke together (March 1, 2024) — the Manzkes’ Los Angeles footprint is essentially République; the active group is République plus Wildflour in the Philippines.

Alumni / mentees

République is the kind of high-volume, high-standards kitchen that functions as a school, and its pastry program in particular — under a James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef ^[4] — has been a credential for cooks moving on. Specific named protégés who have opened their own Los Angeles places are under-documented in the public press relative to, say, the Mozza or Animal trees; this is a known gap. What is documented is the institutional role: République is routinely cited as one of the LA restaurants whose line is a feeder for other serious kitchens, and Margarita’s pastry team is treated as a pedigree on a résumé.

What the tree means

Three things. First, it is a husband-and-wife chef tree where the pastry side is not a junior partner — Margarita’s 2023 James Beard win (after eight nominations) makes her one of the most-awarded Filipina chefs in the United States ^[4], and Sari Sari Store, while it ran, was heritage work, not a side hustle. Second, it is a building-lineage story: by taking the Campanile / Chaplin space the Manzkes connected their group to the Silverton–Peel Campanile and, through it, to the bread-as-discipline strand of modern LA cooking ^[5] — a rare case where the genealogy runs through an address as much as through a kitchen. Third, it is a reminder that LA “French” is rarely only French: the trunk is French-Californian, one branch was a taqueria, and the most personally significant branch was a Filipino rice-bowl stall in a downtown public market. Note the contraction, too: a group that in 2022 ran République, Bicyclette, Manzke, Petty Cash, and Sari Sari Store in Los Angeles had, by spring 2024, closed all but République — a casualty of the 2023–24 LA fine-dining squeeze, not a failure of the cooking.