HUNGRY LOVERS’ FARE, SENSUOUS AND SUBLIME

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day we found ourselves thinking about hungers and thirst, cravings and addiction, beauty, love and, yes, food. Aphrodite lives inside aphrodisiac. To investigate the sensual in the temper of the times, we knew we had to graze. How about a progressive dinner party, from Venice to Pasadena, with each course in a different place? Would the course of love, and love of courses, run smooth?

Our investigative team started off at 72 Market Street with oysters, those wicked mollusks associated with potency. The atmosphere was 1986 romantic and chic. Frank Sinatra sang “Corcovado” over the music system. We watched heartthrob/owner Tony Bill’s reflection in the long mirror and downed thin, elegant but too-salty Crescent Beach oysters from Washington state.

We remembered oysters served on seaweed at La Coupole in Paris and tried 72 Market’s broiled oysters with pesto and salsa. These full-bodied Blue Points were erotic: zesty, rich with Parmesan, and wonderfully hot. But no long-term commitments--we had to meet friends in town for the next course.

Buying apricot-colored roses by the roadside sustained our sense of romance. Famished, we counted the freeway exits to La Cienega Boulevard as we drove north to El Morocco.

“Bring on the salads and the b’stilla, “ we cried. Tiny and newly redecorated, this is a fine place for a feast. Portions are enormous, and one moves deliriously, if less than delicately, through the savory and the sweet.

Garlic is certainly an aphrodisiac, whatever the scientists may say. And there is a lot of garlic in the cool, tantalizing eggplant salad, in the “cigars” of rolled pastries filled with spicy ground beef. Salads come in forceful flavors, and it is exciting to go from the beets with cumin to the eggplant with hot chilies to the sweet carrots. Next there was b’stilla --chicken and almond and egg-filled filo pastries in individual pillows. Topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar, they were flaky, moist, sensuous; they cried out to be eaten with the hands.

That’s when the arguing began. Two of us started to eat with our fingers, claiming that’s half the fun of Moroccan food.

“This is Jewish Moroccan food, and North African Jews do use silverware, but make yourselves at home,” the owner said. Two of us stayed with the implements, two of us brazenly used our fingers all the way through dessert.

In homage to “Tom Jones” we all consumed far too much. The special chicken with quince, and other glistening dried fruits were gobbled up right away. The spicy merguez sausages were heady on a good, dry backdrop of cous cous.

Chicken with olives and preserved lemons was oily, slightly depraved (in the best sense) cuisine. Tearing off pieces of the glazed homemade bread, we were long past mere appetite. No one wanted to drive to Pasadena for dessert because no one wanted to budge. Instead, we drank pots of steaming mint tea poured from a dangerous height.

Visions of the Parkway Grill’s desserts came to us later in the week so we continued the Valentine’s Day probe. First we stopped at what we’d remembered to be a Dorothy Lamour-type haunt, the old Chinese restaurant Kow Loon, with waterfalls and bridges and giant Museum of Natural History-type dioramas set into the wall.

We remembered darkness and exotic drinks of fruit juice and rum. Would we have a Deep Sea Diver? A Puka Puka? A Boo-Loo in a whole pineapple? A Mai Tai or a Dr. Funk? The lights were brighter than we remembered and the waterfall wasn’t running, but we were campily amused with a long tall Zulu No. Two and a Lost Horizon, an outsize martini glass of strong fuchsia brew. No time to talk about old Bob Hope movies though--we had to scoot along to the Parkway Grill.

The Parkway Grill is luscious. No simple love-it-and-leave-it restaurant. From the presentation of glistening oysters and the gleaming tuna sashimi appetizers under the theatrical spot track lights, we could sense a serious fever coming on.

Salads with extra virgin oil and marinated whiter-than-white enoki mushrooms also cast their spell. The designer pizza with lamb and red and yellow peppers was serious commitment stuff, while the delicately marinated grilled chicken conjured up magical nights on the Mediterranean coast.

Desserts equaled their renown. Creme brulee with berries was as sensuous as legal things can be, while devil’s food cake set on a pool of espresso custard tipped the scales of seduction. A collection of fresh berries with vanilla creme fraiche was perfectly lovely and refined.

Is aphrodisiacal dining the stuff of folklore? Why not go out and do some research in honor of the day?

72 Market Street, 72 Market St., Venice, (213) 392-8720. Monday, 6 p.m.-midnight. Tuesday-Saturday, 11:30 am-midnight. Sunday 11 a.m.-midnight. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Valet parking. Oyster bar for 2 (food only): $13-$34.

El Morocco, 8222 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 654-9550. Tuesday-Sunday, 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Dinner for two (food only): $20-$30. (15% gratuity will be added to the bill.)

Kow Loon, 6124 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 655-9721. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. American Express, Visa, MasterCard. Exotic rum drinks, average $3.

Parkway Grill, 510 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, (818) 795-1001. Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m., Friday. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m., Saturday, 5 p.m.-11 p.m., Sunday, 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Reservations recommended. All major credit cards. Valet parking. Dinner for two: (food only) $30-$60.