Latest Fad: Grazing : ‘Grand Tour’ Through Cuisines’ Bites, Pieces

This country probably doesn’t need another new food craze, but it seems to have adopted one anyway.

This newest fad, which actually seems to have some merit, is called grazing. It was a pastime left to cows and other of our four-footed pals, but humans recently have adapted this style of ingestion.

Grazing could be defined as a type of elevated snacking or sophisticated noshing; it means, as the grazers say, going to a restaurant and ordering “lots of little things.” The “little things” are small plates of appetizers and pastas, mostly--real grazers do not order entrees. Grazers do, however, try to sample as many different types of food as they can without either eating or spending too much.

Grazers definitely do not go hungry. They could be thought of as post-modern eaters. As opposed to members of the minimalist school of cooking, which wholeheartedly adopted the austere styles of the nouvelle cuisine (these are the people who enjoy being confronted with a plate with one tiny carrot, one pea pod, and a miniature turnip), grazers are not ashamed of their appetites. They simply don’t want too much of any one thing.

Anyone who wishes to graze, however, first needs a restaurant that is willing to cater to this new (and possibly transitory) style of eating. There are few in San Diego at present, but more doubtless will soon be on the way.

One of the places already catering to grazers is The Grand Tour, a new, large restaurant on the top level of Horton Plaza. The place offers three different dining rooms and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and--most importantly for grazers--it features a menu chock-full of “little things.”

The little things run from clever Italian appetizers and pastas to a selection of authentic Neapolitan pizzas baked in a log-fired brick oven. The restaurant is owned by the Harbor House group, and the menu was designed by chef John Borg, who oversees all the Harbor House kitchens.

Borg said that when he designed this restaurant’s kitchen, he decided to devote a great deal of space to areas for pasta and cold food preparation, and relatively little to conventional cooking areas that would be used for the preparation of entrees. “I just didn’t think we’d serve that many standard entrees. People are eating differently now,” he said.

He instead installed demonstration-cooking areas, all in the French cafe-style front dining room, at which cooks prepare pasta dough, pull ragingly hot pizzas out of the 1,100-degree oven, and roast chickens and lamb on a custom-built vertical rotisserie.

The restaurant takes its name from the “grand tour” of Europe, usually lasting a year and normally under the tutelage of a “scholar,” that was a customary part of the education of wealthy young American men in the first half of the 19th Century. The front dining room, which is the least satisfactory of the three, tries hard for a French cafe ambiance. The central room, the Rose and Crown Pub, is more successful in its mimicry of a traditional English tavern; the menu in this room is largely limited to roast prime rib, carved before the diners’ eyes. The nicest room has an Italian theme and menu. It is a handsome and comfortable room, and one that features good views of the western side of downtown San Diego.

Besides catering to grazers, Borg has pulled an interesting stunt with the menus that allows him to offer somewhat different styles of food in the French and Italian rooms without expending much added effort. He simply chose a basic list of dishes, and then assigned them both French and Italian names. Thus the gamberi alla menta (an appetizer of grilled giant prawns flavored with mint; very nice) of the Italian menu is the crevettes a la menthe of the French menu. Sometimes the garnishes change to suit the cuisine, so that the polenta (a fancy name for corn meal mush) that accompanies some entrees in the Italian room is replaced by potatoes in the French cafe. In other cases, a basic flavoring, such as an herb, is changed from one room to the next.

If the Italian room seems the happiest, so does its menu. It is a happy spot for grazers too, because it is quite possible for two people to share a couple of appetizers, a small plate of pasta, and a pizza, and leave with neither an overburdened digestive tract nor a significantly lightened wallet.

One of the most attractive appetizers is the plate of grilled eggplant slices covered with smoked mozzarella cheese. The dish arrives hot from the grill, the cheese topped with fresh basil leaves and a sprig of oregano, the flavor light and lovely. The mixed antipasto is more elegant and quite good, and is as likable for the pile of marinated eggplant that centers the plate as for the colorful batons of prosciutto-wrapped bread sticks that garnish it. Also interesting are the mussels marinated in vinaigrette, and the combination of sliced buffalo mozzarella dressed with extra virgin olive oil and fresh basil.

Pastas may be had in half- or entree-sized portions, and the smaller servings should satisfy most appetites, especially if an appetizer or salad precedes this course. The fettuccine with cream and porcini mushrooms has the earthy, musky flavor characteristic of these forest fungi; the penne alla carbonara could be thought of as a breakfast-style pasta, since it combines bits of pancetta (Italian bacon) with macaroni tossed in an egg-enriched sauce, and the gnocci with Gorgonzola, or fat pillows of potato-based pasta dough, dressed in a sharp cheese sauce, make a good change of pace.

Thanks to the volcanic temperatures attained by the brick oven, the pizzas cook in approximately 110 seconds. These are thin, Neapolitan pizzas, simple pies made of nothing more than an extremely thin crust topped with a little fresh tomato and a few flavorings. Not all of them include cheese, and those that do contain just a bit, rather than the molten lake of cheese that covers the more familiar American-style pizza. The best of the lot may be the pizza alla putanesca (“hooker’s style,” to be precise), which features fresh tomato, a few thin slices of parmesan (this cheese need not always be grated), a faint hint of anchovy and some really fine Italian brown olives. The thin, fragile crust puffs dramatically in the oven, and seems almost weightless on the tongue. The other flavors complement it nicely, especially the olives, which when charred by the heat actually taste sweet.

This review did not concern itself too much with entrees, but both the roast chicken and lamb were sampled, and both proved to be succulent and well-flavored. A third choice that sounds attractive, but was not sampled, is the luganega sausage, which is made by a supplier in El Cajon especially for the restaurant, and which contains nothing more than pure pork and a little parmesan.

THE GRAND TOUR.

510 Horton Plaza, San Diego.

233-5923.

Meals served seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.; until 11 p.m. weekends.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a glass of house wine each, tax and tip, $20 to $40.