If layoffs or buyouts hit the Los Angeles Times newsroom later this month, as many on the staff predict, you can bet there will be a lot of bitter references to Sunday's front-page story on a dinner party — thrown by the Times at Campanile — to taste-test cloned beef. The invited diners included four Times editors and reporters plus Campanile executive chef Mark Peel, Angeli's Evan Kleiman, USC sociologist and author Barry Glassner (The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong), KCET host Huell Howser, an official of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a UC Davis animal geneticist. That's ten for dinner, dessert and wine at one of Los Angeles' most upscale restaurants — home of the $18 patty melt. Here's the Times menu:

→ Caramelized onion tart with feta cheese
→ Porterhouse steak
→ Burgers
→ Roasted fingerling potatoes
→ Sauteed hedgehog and blue-footed mushrooms
→ Roasted carrots
→ Early-spring English peas with pea tendrils
→ Chocolate tart with chocolate-cocoa-nib ice cream and chocolate sauce
→ Daphne Malvasia prosecco-style sparkling wine from Medici Ermete
→ Domaine Tempier Bandol 2003

The story is full of quotes like "those are good taters" (Glassner) and "so cloning actually has many definitions?" (Howser), but nowhere is it disclosed how much the evening cost or who paid. I'm going to assume the Times picked up the entire tab and that nothing was traded out with one of the LAT Food section's most-favored restaurants — right? — but why not say so? The New York Times would have given the cost, I suspect.

So how much did this "special kind of journalism," as the Times used to boast in ads, cost the news budget? We have to guess. LA Observed takes a stab at l'addition after the jump:

Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu for the LAT

Campanile's prime rib goes for $36, so let's use that for the Porterhouse. At lunch you can get a cheeseburger for $16, so let's use that. (In truth, they probably spent more to bring in the special beef.) Appetizers go for about $15, potato and vegetable sides are $8, and the chocolate tart is $12 on the menu. Wine is more complicated, but on the Internet right now I can find Domaine Tempier Bandol 2003 for between $31 and $35 a bottle, so let's split the difference and add the restaurant markup to get $66 a bottle. The sparkling wine can be found for $16 to $19 online, so I'll use $34.

Figured conservatively:
Porterhouse steaks: $36 x 10 ... $360
Hamburgers $16 x 10 ... $160
Appetizers: $15 x 10 ... $150
Sides: $8 x 20 ... $160
Dessert: $12 x 10 ... $120
FOOD ONLY ==== $950

On the wine, I figure that with Howser and four journalists at table we should assume there was above-average consumption (just kidding Huell!):
Bandol: $66 x 5 ... $330
Malvasia $34 x 2 ... $78
WINE ONLY ==== $408

You know what they always say: 18% service charge added for parties of six or more:
TIP ==== $244

Gotta give Arnold his cut:
SALES TAX ==== $115
--------------------------------------------------------
DUE TO CAMPANILE: $1717

Also figure:
Salaries of four Times staffers for four hours: $700
Freelance photographer Ringo H. W. Chiu: $250
Equivalent of one full A section page: $10,000

Bottom line?:
It probably didn't cost the Times too much more than it would have to send a reporter to the Midwest for a couple of days of reporting on cloned beef, but they also could have convened a panel in the Times test kitchen for a fraction of the expense. Maybe it paid off though: the story ranks #6 right now on the day's most e-mailed list. Let's see how the letter writers treat it.