DISH DISPUTES--CAN THE CHEF BE WRONG?

Some weeks ago in this column, with the help of several prominent chefs and restaurateurs around town, I discussed the problem of customers who send food back. If a diner doesn’t like a certain dish, should the restaurant take the price of that dish off the check, or offer to prepare another dish at the same price? It’s a sticky problem, and I wasn’t particularly surprised when most of those chefs and restaurateurs I polled replied that each case had to be judged individually.

The query that launched the discussion came from a chef whose halibut (and, he felt, integrity) had been questioned by a diner. The chef had refused to remove the price of that halibut from the check. Now I’ve received a letter from a customer about another restaurant, a longtime establishment that has recently moved to new quarters in Beverly Hills. My correspondent dined there one evening, he writes, as one of a group of three couples. Three of the party ordered the same chicken dish, and all three found it “so overdosed with oregano that (it was) inedible” and thus sent it back. A waitress then informed the three that they could order any new dish they wanted, but would have to pay for the chicken too. When the group protested and asked to speak to the owner (who is also the chef), the latter refused to come out of the kitchen. When one of the party, having received a check on which the chicken was charged for, later bearded her in her den, she flatly refused to make an adjustment.

I don’t know the whole story, of course, but I must say again that I wonder at this sort of intransigence on the part of restaurateurs that an item is never taken off a check; the customer might not always be right, but I wonder at the notion that the customer is never right. Is the chef in question not human? Is it simply impossible that there really was too much oregano in the chicken? And if so, gee, how does somebody get to be so perfect? Any chef or restaurateur so good at his or her calling that he or she never ever sends out food that isn’t all it should be should probably get out of the business altogether and write a book about the trick of obtaining such improbable perfection--instead of wasting time serving a notoriously erratic public in a famously difficult business like restaurateuring.

OUT TO LUNCH: Cook’s Magazine, a handsome, serious bimonthly dedicated to American food, is published in Connecticut, but it tries to cover the entire country in its feature stories and news briefs. It’s been having a bit of trouble with California lately, though: In the May/June issue, it moved Berkeley’s famous Fourth Street Grill to San Francisco; in September/October it presents us with the stunning information that “Downtown Los Angeles’ oldest grill, Lusso and Frank’s . . . is not a glamour hangout” and that the new Columbia Bar & Grill serves food “not too different” from “Lusso’s”--peppers stuffed with shrimp, veal sausage, and crab cakes, for example. They’ve given us a whole new restaurant, in other words. In fact, it sounds good. I was getting tired of that place in Hollywood, Musso and Frank’s, anyway--you know, the one with the longtime celebrity clientele, the flannel cakes, the chicken pot pie, and the diplomat pudding.

SALT AND PEPPER: Chef Roy Yamaguchi offers special High Holy Day price-fixed dinners at his 385 North--well, why not? This is California--including double strength homemade chicken soup with chicken quenelles and shiitake mushrooms, grilled dill-cured salmon with potato pancakes, and seared whitefish with saffron, among other things, on the evenings of Oct. 4-6, and 13. The regular menu will also be served. . . . Chef Mark Miller, whose Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe, N.M., is the most famous non-existent restaurant in the world (he’s been trying to get it open for well over a year) will cook a number of his specialties at the Parkway Grill in Pasadena this coming Tuesday through Thursday. Such uncommon fare as Yucatan lime soup, barbecued duck cakes, corn ravioli with cinnamon chorizo, grilled tamarind squab, and goats’ milk caramel with homemade vanilla ice cream will be offered. . . . Holly Peterson, chef and coordinator of wine and food for the Robert Mondavi Winery presents a special food and wine evening at La Couronne in Pasadena, Oct. 15. . . . The Bay Area Restaurant Assn. presents “A Taste of the South Bay,” featuring specialties from more than 20 local restaurants, tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Torrance. Tickets are $15 each, and proceeds will benefit Cheers for Children, the Salvation Army, and other such organizations. . . . More than 30 California wineries will be showcased, with more South Bay food, this afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m., again at the Holiday Inn in Torrance, in a “Fall Festival of Wines” to benefit the Gardena Senior Citizens Day Care Center. This one is $20 per ticket. . . . A “Great Chefs of Orange County” food and wine festival, to benefit the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California, is scheduled for Oct. 19 at the Alicante Princess Hotel in Garden Grove. Some 13 wineries and 24 restaurants will be represented, and participating chefs will include Jean-Marc Weber of the Hotel Meridien and Claude Koeberle of the 30th Street Bistro. Call (714) 996-2385 or (213) 641-8152 for information. . . . Laventhol & Horwath and the California Restaurant Assn. co-sponsor a “Strategies for Success” seminar for restaurant owners, operators, developers, and investors, Tuesday at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton Hotel. Admission is $75 per person. Call (800) 252-0444 for details.

ERSATZ ZAGAT: A blatant imitation of the Zagat consumer restaurant survey, which asked L.A. diners recently to rate their favorite local eating places in return for a free copy of the guidebook that would result from a tabulation of their ratings, surfaced recently at Spago’s American Food & Wine Festival. That event benefited Meals on Wheels; the secondhand questionnaire, called “Los Angeles 1987 Foodsurveys,” offers to donate $1 to that organization for every completed form returned to them. If you’d like a copy of your own, write to Foodsurveys at 7985 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 109-34, West Hollywood 90046.