11 L.A. CHEFS COOK UP ONE BIG DINNER

Last Monday would not have been a good night to eat out in Los Angeles. If you had gone to Primi, the chef would not have been there. If you had gone to Michael’s you would have found the chef gone, too. You would not have found the chef in at Trumps either--nor at Angeli, Max au Triangle, Chinois on Main, 385 North, Saint Estephe, or the City Restaurant. All those chefs were gathered under a single roof, cooking together. The American Institute of Wine and Food had decided to launch its Los Angeles Chapter, and do it in a big way.

When the Institute was inaugurated in San Francisco, it brought in the biggest names in the country to throw one of the first multi-chef bashes. At that time the idea seemed so extraordinary that people went around publicly sneering at the idea. How, critics asked, would so many big egos manage to maneuver around a kitchen? Too many chefs, they predicted, would spoil not only the broth but everything else as well.

When it turned out that Paul Prudhomme and Larry Forgione and Jonathan Waxman and Alice Waters and Jimmy Schmidt and Mark Miller and Bradley Ogden and Wolfgang Puck and Jeremiah Tower not only liked working together, but actually managed to produce one of the finest meals that anybody could remember eating, almost everyone was astonished. The dinner was a total triumph, and it changed the way we look at chefs. Two-and-a-half years later, nobody suggested that the chefs would have trouble working together; so many celebrity chefs do so many charity dinners that the very concept of too many chefs has become outmoded. These days, you can’t have too many chefs.

But you can have too many guests. And from the earliest moments of Monday’s dinner, that seemed to be the case. Almost 500 people paid $125 for the dinner at the Beverly Hilton, and the crush at the reception made it seem like a thousand. People were shoving to get at the wonderful fresh oysters, the champagne ran out, and so many people reached for the sauteed American foie gras that ringed fingers became engaged in subtle duels. A quick visit to the kitchen made it clear that they were having a lot more fun back there.

There they were, all happily sauteing shrimps for Michael Roberts’ potato pancakes with shrimp, tequila and tomato sauce and spooning Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken’s swordfish ceviche into little blue boats. There was a slightly halcyon spirit in the air, and you knew the chefs were having a very good time.

Meanwhile, the guests are moving into the dining room which is ringed by a forest of video screens. As we sit down to the first of ten courses, each accompanied by a wine from Southern California, the voice of Julia Child brays a welcome. Then the scene changes and we are treated to a totally inaudible interview with Trumps chef Michael Roberts. As the shrimp-topped potato pancakes are carried to the table, we see a live shot of Roberts cooking them. This fades out, to be replaced by a short interview with Jim Ahern, whose 1984 Sauvignon Blanc we are about to imbibe.

The next scene looks like a shot from The Shape of Things to Come. It is fairly puzzling until the camera moves to the City Restaurant; ah, you say to yourself, future food. As the ceviche in its dear little blue boats arrives, we witness Michael McCarty and the City Restaurant chefs shouting at each other over the traffic outside the restaurant. This may be a bit muddled, but the flavors of the dish come through loud and clear. The first cheer goes up from the crowd.

Next we get a risotto from Primi, accompanied by what is described as a “wild and crazy chardonnay” from Corbett Canyon. I think it is a bit wild and crazy to attempt risotto for 500, and while the dish is greeted with great cheers from the crowd, mine is slightly undercooked.

Now a single oyster balanced on a plate is carried to the table. It is the Chinois course--created by Kazuto Matsusaka--and it has the elegance which characterizes the restaurant’s best dishes. The oyster has been dipped into curry, sauteed, put back in the shell, topped with a sauce of cucumber and sprinkled with salmon caviar. It is a beautiful dish, a delicious dish--but that single oyster does look slightly silly on that great big plate. It is served with a fine Qupe Chardonnay. By now it is becoming obvious that just as each course displays the extraordinary stylistic differences between the chefs, the wines present an amazing range of Southern California possibilities. And the wines are being whisked away so fast that I am barely getting a chance to discover the differences.

On the screen, Joachim Splichal is saying that cooking in Los Angeles is much more fun than cooking in Europe. McCarty tells us that we are about to receive Splichal’s baby turnips stuffed with mousse of cepes and shallots. It is, he says, a tasty little dish. Little turns out to be the operative word. The dish is intricately constructed--the turnips have been hollowed out and stuffed with a puree of mushrooms, thyme, cream and walnut oil, then covered with a sauce of herbs and wine and cream. The wine, a crisp chardonnay from Au Bon Climat, is a perfect foil. This time, when the waiter trys to take the wine away, I struggle for my glass. He gives me a lecture about what would happen if everybody wanted to keep his glass until the next course came and firmly walks off with it.

Now comes Roy Yamaguchi’s course, and he does himself proud. The 385 North chef has created a gorgeously undercooked slice of seared salmon covered with a sweetish orange sauce that is beautifully balanced by the slightly piney flavor of shiso . This is the sort of East-West dish for which this Japanese-born, French-trained chef is becoming known.

Michael McCarty, producer of the video, is on the screen alone now, giving us a little lecture. “One of the things I like about my restaurant,” he says, “is that we brought in modern art.” He walks through his restaurant pointing out Hockney, Diebenkorn, Stella. It is vaguely like a docent’s tour, and it is more than a little irritating. “I have created a beautiful setting in which to enjoy fine food,” he says. It has all become a bit too much--and then suddenly the beautiful setting shifts and we are treated to the Three Stooges throwing food at each other. Five hundred people burst out laughing.

McCarty’s chef, Martin Garcia, (who began at the restaurant as a dishwasher) has cooked the the main course--a grilled filet of lamb accompanied by a lively salad of radicchio and mache and some spicy kernels of corn. More cheers go up; by now the dinner is beginning to sound more like a football game than a black-tie event.

John Sedlar of Saint Estephe almost single-handedly invented the blending of French and southwestern foods that are starting to come into vogue. His offering is a truly beautiful dish he calls zebra chile rellenos. Green and red chiles are stuffed with a duxelles of mushroom, covered with a garlic goat-cheese sauce and then cut into strips. The chiles are alternated on the plate, so that there is one green strip, then a red one. The dish is sophisticated, interesting, and very fine with the ’78 Firestone Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve.

Finally, dessert. Another cheer goes up. Roger E. Pigozzi and John Raab, chefs at the Beverly Hilton hotel, have made rococo little baskets of meringue, set them on nests of spun sugar, filled them with mango mousse and raspberries. It is, by far, the most traditional dish of the evening. Isn’t it time that somebody invented some California desserts?

But dessert, it turns out, is not the end. The eating never stops. As we leave the table we are regaled with pizzas from Angeli and good spicy duck gumbo from Orleans. And more wine--this time the Pinot Noir Vin Gris from Sanford. As these got nibbled, the dinner got discussed.

Why, people wondered, did this event not seem as glamorous as the one in San Francisco? The elements--talented chefs, fine food, wonderful wine, video--were the same. But the tension on that evening had been tremendous--nobody thought the first dinner would work, and the elation when it did was immense. This time around, it was different.

It’s nice to have the fine chefs of Los Angeles gathered in one kitchen, and it is convenient to sample their styles without having to run from restaurant to restaurant. But times have changed, and everybody was so blase that one of the chefs even showed up two hours late. The event was billed as “the cutting edge of L.A. cuisine,” but these days it takes more than a gathering of chefs to create an edge.