GASTRONOMIC GAMES

The Fine Affair, 666 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Bel-Air, (213) 476-2848. Open for lunch Tuesday-Friday, for dinner Tuesday-Sunday and for Sunday brunch. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $56-$82.

Welcome to a new game called Restaurant Critic; it’s a sort of treasure hunt whose object is to discover hidden gems.

Here’s how the game is played:

You begin by being inundated with calls and letters from a publicist complaining that for 10 years your publication has ignored one of the finest restaurants in town. This, says the caller, is a scandalous situation that you must immediately remedy. You:

1--Decide that if the restaurant was really all that wonderful you would have heard of it and ignore the request.

2--Call up everybody whose opinion you respect and ask if they have been there.

3--Figure that any restaurant that’s survived this long deserves the courtesy of a visit.

If you answered No. 3, give yourself 10 points. If you didn’t, come along with us to The Fine Affair anyway. Notice, as we go through the door, that the walls are painted an unusual green, that the tables are quite close together, and that rose petals seem to be strewn across the tablecloths. Notice that the tiered table in the middle of the dining room is topped with delicious-looking desserts and fake flowers. Notice, too, that the wine list is good and big, if not exactly filled with bargains.

The maitre d’ decants your wine, a ’78 Clos du Bois Cabernet that costs $25, in the following manner: He takes a beautiful cut-glass decanter with a silver band across the entire neck and, using a little silver funnel, empties the bottle into it. You:

1--Think it’s pretentious to be decanting a wine this young and scoff at the idea.

2--Think it’s ridiculous to decant wine into a bottle with an opaque neck, for any sediment would be impossible to see.

3--Realize the point of all this is to aerate the wine, and enjoy the charming ritual.

I’d say No. 3 was the proper answer, although others incline to both Nos. 1 and 2.

The first courses come. One is a thin, hot cream of asparagus soup. It is filled with flavor, but you must take points away from the waiter because he forgot to mention the tiny bay scallops hiding in the bottom (and the person who ordered the soup is violently allergic to shellfish). A very pretty tuna tartare wrapped in smoked salmon loses points because the salmon is just too strong for the tuna, which is cubed rather than chopped. The quail salad with mache, tiny green beans, and a hard-boiled quail egg gets very good marks: It is beautifully presented and very delicious. Unfortunately, a lobster salad brings the score back to zero, for the meat is virtually tasteless, as if it had been sitting in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

So far the restaurant has been pleasant, but not particularly impressive. You think about all the other restaurants in town where you could be spending this money. But the main courses are still to come. And they are a surprise.

Squab arrives rare in a fine strong garlic-laden sauce; it is a delicious dish. John Dory revels in a beautifully made saffron-tomato sauce. But the loup de mer in truffle cream sauce is vaguely disappointing, the vegetables are quite pedestrian--broccoli, baby carrots, tiny turnips--and a veal chop is fairly fatty.

One dessert turns out to be delightful--a little chocolate box filled with cake and cream and kiwi. But there’s not much creme in the raspberry creme brulee, and the cheesecake is a bore. As you pay the bill you contemplate your options. Do you:

1--Like the restaurant enough to want to tell the world about it.

2--Dislike the restaurant enough to want to write about it.

3--Decide that you neither like it nor dislike it very much, and since nothing you say will bring people in or keep them away, you might as well reserve judgment.

4--Put it on your list for another visit.

No. 4, as you probably guessed, is the correct answer. But you get extra points because in the weeks between visits the publicist keeps calling. Finally you go back.

It is a dark and rainy night and your sweet waiter tells you that you are sitting in the very seat that Ronald Reagan once occupied. You have a dinner much like the previous one--most of the dishes are good, especially a duck served in two courses (first the breast in a Pinot Noir and pepper sauce, then a confit made of the leg) and a warm salad made of pleurottes and oyster mushrooms in a radicchio cup. Rack of lamb comes out surrounded by a forcemeat, accompanied by a great big lacquered potato. Venison is nice enough, but sadly lacking in game flavor. A watery salad is presented with a seriously chilled fork. The service is professional, everything has been quite nice, but this restaurant is not so impressive that you feel compelled to tell the world about it. This time around, you choose No. 3.

You reckoned, however, without the publicist. She writes, saying she is at the end of her rope because she has “pitched until she is blue in the face and seem to get nowhere.” So back you go, for yet another visit. And this is where the game starts to be fun.

You walk in for lunch and the maitre d’ looks around the almost-empty room, looks down his nose, inquires if you have a reservation and then leads you not to that nice empty table by the window but to one squeezed up against a wall. Do you:

1--Demand a better table.

2--Get angry and leave.

3--Shrug and settle in for a bumpy ride.

Any of the above answers are acceptable; I chose No. 3. And I got what I expected.

We began with a very salty carrot soup and a fine charcuterie plate (rabbit pate, pistachio-studded pheasant pate and three cheeses). When the dour captain strolled by, I asked him what the cheeses were. “Port Salut, Gouda and Roquefort,” he said brusquely. That was clearly not the right answer, so when the waiter appeared I asked again. “I’ll have to ask in the kitchen,” he said, re-emerging a minute later to say dubiously, “They say it’s blue cheese, Brie and Port Salut.” The blue wasn’t Roquefort and there was no Brie to be seen, but that was obviously as good an answer as I was going to get.

After a lackluster lunch (terrible chicken salad, bland but homemade ravioli filled with ricotta, prosciutto and spinach), the waiter said, “This is a good day for dessert. They were made fresh today.” We got up to take a look at the cake-laden table--a tarte tatin, some millefeuilles filled with kiwi and raspberry, a nice chocolate torte--but just then the dour captain appeared. “Go back to your seats,” he said sternly. “We will bring those to the table.” (Later the waiter will ask, “Did you get scolded?”). The critic notes:

1--It’s hard to trust a kitchen that isn’t sure of what it’s serving.

2--Nobody goes to restaurants to get scolded.

3--If they made the desserts fresh today, does that mean that they were stale yesterday and will be stale tomorrow?

So much for playing Restaurant Critic. The problem is that unlike other games, in this one the answers so often turn out to be ambiguous.