CELEBRATING A MEAL TO MAKE A FOODIE SING

The “Official Foodie Handbook,” which was just published in England, lists 13 American restaurants in its address book for Foodies on the move. Four of these are in California, among them Michael’s in Santa Monica, which it calls “one of the most expensive restaurants in the world,” and Chez Panisse in Berkeley, termed “the best restaurant on the West Coast.” (The other two are the Fourth St. Grill and the Santa Fe Bar and Grill, both in Berkeley.)

These days, you don’t have to be a Foodie to know that Alice Waters is the proprietor of Chez Panisse. There have been articles written everywhere about Waters and her enormous influence. But if there were a Foodie version of Trivial Pursuit, the name Paul Bertolli would probably draw a blank with everyone who played. And yet this man, who is almost never mentioned among the disciples of Alice Waters, is one of the reasons why Chez Panisse is such a good restaurant, for he has been its chef for the last 2 1/2 years.

“The first time I asked Alice for a job,” Bertolli recalls, “she sort of shooed me out of the kitchen.” Waters may have thought Bertolli, who has a degree in classical music, was just another optimistic dilettante. But although Bertolli never went to cooking school, he has an impressive food background: When he was young, he worked in a butcher shop for six years, becoming an apprentice before he left for college. And, in his own words, “I’ve always been interested in Italian foods; my parents are both Italian and I grew up with it.”

Waters wouldn’t have him, so Bertolli went to the Fourth Street Grill (also mentioned in the “Foodie Handbook”), where he ended up running the kitchen. He then went to Florence, where he cooked in three different restaurants. Upon his return, he did some catering. “Alice came to one meal and got excited about it,” says Bertolli. “I think she especially liked the fact that I was cooking with olive oil I had made myself.” It had taken three years, but Bertolli had finally managed to convince Waters to hire him.

At the moment Waters is occupying herself with the upstairs Cafe, and leaving the more elegant downstairs restaurant to Bertolli. It is he who makes up the $40 prix fixe menus, which change every night. “I don’t use cookbooks at all,” he says. “I don’t even like to read them; they inhibit me. I don’t bring any papers into the kitchen.” He finds his inspiration by looking at food, and in his own words, “One thing develops from the next. The crab raviolis last week became the crab cakes last night.”

And it was he who came up with the idea last winter of doing one special Italian lunch, a really extraordinary meal that would be completely his own. “I had some ideas for dishes that I thought were really good and I wanted to put them all together and go for it.” The result was the best Italian meal that I have ever eaten in this country. The lunch was such a success that Bertolli repeated it in the fall; it was, if possible, even more delicious.

The meal was served in the Joseph Phelps Winery in the Napa Valley, in a room filled with dusky golden light and the scent of aromatic, burning fig branches. The first course, cured filet of beef, looked exactly like rose petals. This was spectacular brasaola --not gamy, just delicately perfumed, covered with slices of raw chanterelles, marinated onions, lemon and olive oil. The Freisa served with it--a slightly fizzy little wine--was perfect with the beef.

“He tried 50 wines for the dinner before he settled on which ones to serve,” said Waters, agreeing that his choices were all quite perfect. “I’ve never been intellectual about wine,” Bertolli says. “This was an opportunity for me to match wine and food, and I was pleased to realize that I really did have some strong feelings.”

The next wine, an Antinori Riserva 1967, came with braised veal tripe in a sort of stew of tomatoes sprinkled with cheese. Even non-tripe lovers were forced to admire this delicate and delicious dish.

An older Antinori Riserva, the 1964, arrived with the pigeon tortelli . The tortelli were beautiful--slightly ruffled at the edges--in a clear, intense giblet-sprinkled sauce. The tortelli were entirely al dente , the pigeon a great textural contrast to the chewiness of the pasta and the little bites of giblet.

Next came a long pause, an opportunity to wander outside among the vines and sniff the cool autumn air. Finally, we sat down again to eat our way through platters of assorted grilled fish and shellfish, accompanied by a white wine, Tunina 1982. Grilled halibut came wrapped in slightly charred fig leaves and served with grilled peppers in tones of brown, yellow and red. Then came huge grilled shrimp, perfectly plain, perfectly wonderful, accompanied by gold and red tomatoes. This was followed by an extraordinary marriage of field and sea, a dish of fresh beans in which there were rings of squid. “We had tasted the lobster-and-fava-beans dish at Il Giardino,” Waters said, “and Paul thought that it was a good idea that needed work.” Finally there were tiny scallops, strung on skewers with little zucchini and yellow squash.

A salad came next, followed by a Barolo 1970 that was poured while a basket of pears was passed. There was a bowl of honey on the table and plates of Gorgonzola and walnut bread. “Honey and Gorgonzola are often eaten together in Italy,” Bertolli said, but I had never before had this seductive combination of the sweet and the savory. The textures of the creamy cheese and voluptuous honey on top of that dense, nutted bread, followed by a cool bite of juicy pear, was the oral equivalent of watching the eating scene in “Tom Jones.”

It’s a hard act to follow, but Bertolli managed. We all said that we couldn’t possibly eat another bite. Then an irresistible warm fig-and-prune tart arrived and we all ate our words. For food like this makes you feel that you can go on eating forever. It also makes you feel extremely happy, as if all the good things of the earth were somehow being wrapped up and spread out before you. “Well,” Bertolli says modestly, “I just cook unfussy stuff.”

Chez Panisse is at 1517 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley. Reservations: (415) 548-5525.