Detective Cooks Up an Arresting Second Career as a French Chef

It’s dinner time at Les Anges restaurant in Santa Monica. The chic are sipping chardonnay in the cool, gray dining room, their nostrils teased by the intricate smells of sauteing hazelnuts and lime.

In the restaurant’s kitchen, where the temperature hovers near 80 degrees, Don Hartwell wipes his dripping brow and dances from skillet to simmering skillet in the gastronomic ballet of a French sous chef, the kitchen’s No. 2 man. Another perfect loup de mer aux noisettes (sea bass) coming up.

Though he may look and act the near-frenzied part, Hartwell’s work three and four nights a week at Les Anges, one of the city’s most renowned French restaurants, could hardly be more different from his regular daytime job. Hartwell is also a cop, a detective lieutenant in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department’s missing persons section.

His is a world of guns and butter, but it is the latter that captivates him most.

“A lot of people dream about turning their hobby into a professional pursuit,” said Hartwell, 44, who is divorced and lives in Redondo Beach. “I’m very fortunate because I love to cook and that’s what I’m doing. The money’s not great, but it doesn’t really matter.”

Prepares Fish Dishes

Hartwell prepares most of the fish dishes and hot hors d’oeuvres served at Les Anges (The Angels). For such a job, cooks in French restaurants traditionally would begin their training as teen-age kitchen helpers, peeling carrots and potatoes. It takes years for most to earn the position of sous chef.

Hartwell is the first to admit that he took a few shortcuts before being hired in January. He never had to peel vegetables professionally. He’s never even been to France.

“You do best what you really want to do,” explained Patrick Jamon, a 31-year-old Frenchman and Les Anges’ head chef. “That is why Don is here.”

Hartwell grew up amid lumber mills in rural Washington, where fries were about as French as the food got. He left his small home town for the big city--Seattle--and spent three years as a patrolman there before deciding, on a whim, to move to Los Angeles.

It was 1968 when Hartwell joined the force in Los Angeles, writing tickets, pursuing burglars and gulping down ‘am-bourgairs indiscriminately on his lunch breaks.

His eating interests were to change, though, in 1969, when his mother joined the Cook Book of the Month Club. As fate would have it, the first volume to arrive was “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by that culinary demigod, Julia Child.

Began Experimenting

“I have no use for this,” huffed Hartwell’s mother, more concerned with pot roast than pot-au-feu. So she gave the book to her policeman son.

Hartwell whipped through the chapters like a starving man through souffle. Sheepishly, at first, he began experimenting with recipes, serving occasional dinners to friends.

As his confidence grew, so did his library of French cook books. He began scouring the newspapers for challenging new recipes. He bought the best copper cookware he could find. Soon, on days when he wasn’t chasing bad guys, he was out shopping for the freshest basil, for the most tender veal.

And what French meal would be complete without wine? Eventually, Hartwell would collect more than 80 cases of vintage Bordeaux and assorted California reds.

Perhaps there was something incongruous about it all: splitting time between the genteel trappings of fine dining and the stark realities of fighting crime. But Hartwell seemed to immerse himself in both with equal aplomb.

He made sergeant in 3 1/2 years, and was promoted to lieutenant five years after that. Following patrol and administrative assignments, he transferred in 1979 to Detective Headquarters Division, the department’s 24-hour command post.

Supervises 40 Detectives

Today, he supervises more than 40 detectives, oversees the hunt for missing people and coordinates investigators from the city attorney’s office, among other responsibilities. The job, he says, is strictly administrative--a world away from the duties of a street cop.

Police officers occasionally ask him “genuine recipe questions” when they discover his expertise, Hartwell said. Many others, though, look upon his gourmet interests with a certain disdain, as if such indulgences somehow violate the hard-nose image all cops once shared.

Said Hartwell: “It’s just not their kind of life style.”

Five years ago, Hartwell’s gourmet pursuits led him to discover Les Anges, which had just opened. There he met Jamon, its chef, who had trained in some of France’s finest three-star kitchens. Impressed by the “intensity” of Jamon’s sauces, Hartwell became a regular at the restaurant.

When Jamon held cooking courses in 1985, Hartwell was among the first to sign up, and the last to leave each class. Long after the other students had gone home to practice their sauces, the cop in Hartwell was still at work, pumping the chef for additional clues.

Asked to Watch

The two men became friends. One day, when Hartwell asked if he might sit in the corner of Les Anges’ kitchen and watch Jamon at work, the Frenchman shrugged and said, “Why not?”

“The next step after that was, ‘Can I put on an apron and help out a little?’ ” Hartwell said. “People go to France and live on peanuts for years for the same training. I figured this was my chance to still live right here and learn everything they did.”

He proved a quick study. After Jamon’s last sous chef left in late 1985 to become a head chef at another French restaurant--as all of Jamon’s sous chefs have done--Hartwell got the job.

“It certainly dispelled any notion of cops as one-dimensional people who wear brown shoes with blue pants,” observed Les Anges’ co-owner, Richard Drapkin.

Hartwell could retire on a pension from the Police Department in another two years. While he said he hasn’t decided when he actually will leave law enforcement, he is certain that his path ultimately will lead toward the kitchen.

After all, what could be more arresting than loup de mer?