FAMOUS CHEFS: HAVE KNIVES, WILL TRAVEL

Every traveling chef knows that he will be attacked by jet lag, discouraged by unavailable ingredients, irritated by forgotten objects and depressed by unfamiliar kitchens. And yet, despite all this, the great chefs of America are constantly trotting about the countryside with their pots and their pans.

Why do they do it? Because the modern chef is never content to stay in the kitchen, and every one of them is looking for greater fame, new diners to delight--and more customers for the books that they will inevitably write. Last week alone, six famous chefs landed in Southern California.

Diana Kennedy, who revolutionized the way Americans think about Mexican food, knew that she would have trouble finding epazote in San Diego this time of year. So before she left her home in Mexico, she carefully packed a big bunch of the herb.

“I spent a night at a friend’s house before coming here,” she said, “and I put the greens in her refrigerator. When I arrived the next day, I found I had mistakenly taken her spinach.” Kennedy simply left the herb out.

Lindsey Shere, author of “The Chez Panisse Dessert Cookbook,” got to San Diego only to discover that the freezer she needed was 20 miles from the kitchen in which her lunch for 350 people was being cooked. “And I chose sorbets,” said the Berkeley chef, “because I thought that in this warm climate every professional kitchen would have facilities for making them.”

Meanwhile, Alice Waters discovered that although she had brought her own bread and olive oil and pickles, she had forgotten to pack the prosciutto she was planning to use. Frantic forays to local stores ensued.

It was precisely to avoid this problem that Joyce Goldstein, owner of Square One restaurant in San Francisco, came equipped with everything she needed. “I even brought my own fish,” she admitted. “I didn’t want any surprises.”

Jean-Louis Palladin, chef of Jean-Louis in Washington’s Watergate Hotel, came prepared but was still surprised. He even brought his own squid ink to make black pasta. “But I thought abalone would be easy to get on the West Coast,” he said in a mystified tone, “and when I got here I couldn’t find any.” His Baltimore supplier sent the fish flying.

At the other end of the spectrum is Seppi Renggli of the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. He travels light; Renggli stepped off the plane with nothing but a knife. “That’s confidence,” said another chef admiringly.

The chefs came to California for a variety of reasons. In Palladin’s case, it was to promote the Watergate Hotel in a series of private lunches and dinners. The lunch I went to was heavily attended by food writers who sat down saying in reverent voices that Palladin is the best chef in America. His food is impressive. The meal began with a creamy corn soup punctuated by kernels of crunchy raw corn and plump little Belon oysters whose coppery quality made the soup seem especially sweet.

Then, to large sighs of astonishment, came one of Palladin’s signature dishes. The chef layers saffron mousse, lobster mousse and spinach mousse between ribbons of squid-tinted pasta until the colors glow against the black. A coulis of peppers serves to further embellish the dish. To me, the dish is always a bit of a let-down; it does not taste nearly as good as it looks.

Next came the world’s fanciest stuffed cabbage. Baby leaves had been stuffed with duck foie gras , then braised in a fine cabbage consomme. The dish was interesting and elegant, but to my mind the foie gras lost its most enticing quality, that velvet texture. No complaints about the next course, heaps of flaky crabmeat gently bound by an airy lobster mousse. Paired with a peppery coulis of tomatoes, these were surely the world’s best crabcakes.

There was more (and this was lunch!), ending with no fewer than three desserts. These were made for Palladin by Michel Richard, who has never seemed more masterful. A concoction of dense chocolate and halvah in a sauce made of maple syrup and late-harvest Riesling was one of the most intense sweets I’ve ever experienced. The chocolate and sesame were the same texture and density, but as they melted in your mouth they changed, so you were left with the butteriness of the chocolate, the graininess of the sesame.

Palladin quite frankly came to Los Angeles looking for new customers. With meals like this one, he undoubtedly succeeded. But the other chefs, all of whom were cooking in San Diego, came at the request of the American Institute of Wine and Food, which was holding its third national conference at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. These chefs were also strutting their stuff, but they were doing it under more difficult circumstances. Palladin was cooking for only 20 people at a time; the other chefs were all facing hundreds.

Diana Kennedy, the doyenne of Mexican food, opened the conference with a buffet. It was served outside, on a clear, cold night, and although I have a hard time liking anything when I’m hopping from foot to foot, freezing and juggling plates, the cabrito al pastor, truly tiny goats grilled on an open fire, sliced and served on hand-made tortillas, were wonderful. So were the beans, which were splashed with beer just as they were served. Panuchos , tiny tortillas filled with black beans, fried in lard and topped with pork, were greasy and good and satisfying. This is the kind of food you plunge into with your teeth and your fingers, the kind that leaves your face dirty and makes you feel like eating more. It tasted so good it made me wish that good Mexican restaurants were not so hard to find.

From good and greasy, the conference went to spare and lean. Seppi Renggli, who coined the much-copied term “Spa cuisine” at the Four Seasons, served an elegantly beautiful sit-down lunch. The menu listed not only the number of calories per dish, but also a dozen other vital statistics (fat, fiber, etc.). The meal was more than filling, and I couldn’t help thinking that if this is Renggli’s idea of a diet, I’d love to see what he comes up with when he’s out to add a few pounds.

The first course (191 calories) was colorful timbales of diced vegetables and tofu wrapped in baby cabbage and topped with peanut sauce. Next came large slices of swordfish (252 calories); these had been baked in liquid so that they emerged plump and moist, almost unrecognizable as the dry white fish you are ordinarily served. It was accompanied by the largest wild rice I have ever seen (184.4 calories).

The dessert, sliced fruits in mango puree (202 calories), was slightly disappointing. It was pretty, but it had almost as many calories as the fish!

Calories were clearly not a consideration in the meal cooked by the Northern California chefs, but freshness was. Alice Waters and Paul Bertolli of Chez Panisse literally decided their menu in the fields.

The morning haze was still hovering over the Chino Ranch farm as the chefs walked up and down the rows of vegetables, pinching and tasting as they walked. Waters picked her own herbs, and then headed back to make rolls of prosciutto stuffed with the tiny greens and to decorate slices of tongue with chopped eggs and minute radishes and arugula. There were platters of pickled vegetables and great slices of cheese-topped toast covered with long-cooked broccoli and dotted with anchovies and olives. This was enormously satisfying food.

Joyce Goldstein served her cuscusu Trapanese , a uniquely delicious soup, as the main course. Made of gently baked fish in a rich spicy broth filled with grains of couscous, this dish had layers of flavors, so that each time you took a spoonful you got a slightly different taste.

The meal was completed by Lindsey Shere’s gorgeous orange sorbets and delicate cookies, and I’d say it was the most delicious banquet meal I’ve ever eaten. “It’s so simple,” said a Chicago cook, “but you never get food like this in America. This meal alone was worth the trip.”

To the chefs themselves, the trip offered more than an opportunity to convert new customers to their way of cooking. They were happy to have the chance to taste each other’s work. Palladin went zipping around the restaurants of Los Angeles, and the San Francisco chefs were asking everybody for restaurant recommendations.

Meanwhile, Seppi Renggli stood munching a panucho, saying, “My first job in America was making Mexican food at La Fonda del Sol. I wouldn’t have missed Diana Kennedy’s cooking.”

And to some chefs, the sheer challenge of this guerrilla cooking is reward enough. Said Joyce Goldstein as she described the trauma of traveling with gallons of fish stock: “I probably shouldn’t say this, but it was all so much fun I’d do it again.”