TROTTING OUT HOLIDAY MENU DERBY ENTRIES

Holiday madness threatens once again, from every shop window, every billboard, every TV commercial--and from at least a few of the better professional kitchens around town. Here’s an early peek at some of the more interesting Christmas and New Year’s goings-on in local precincts:

Chef Nobuo Saga presents a class on the art of preparing a traditional Japanese o-sechi New Year’s dinner, next Sunday at 3 p.m. at the New Otani Hotel downtown. The fee is $8 per person in advance, $9.50 per person at the door. . . . Cafe Cordiale in Sherman Oaks offers a “Twelve Days of Christmas” dinner, Saturday through Dec. 24 from 4 to 11:30 p.m. at $19.95 a head. . . . Ivan Boesky notwithstanding, the Beverly Hills Hotel puts on a happy face for its 40th annual Christmas Carol Luncheon Dec. 24 from noon to 3 p.m. ($35 for adults, $25 for children). As a regular attendee of the event myself in years long gone, I can highly recommend it for instilling Christmas cheer in one and all. . . .

The Rangoon Racquet Club in Beverly Hills stages gala Christmas Eve ($45) and New Year’s Eve ($110) dinners in association with Singapore Airlines. Dishes of Singapore and its immediate neighbors will be featured, and door prizes on New Year’s Eve will include two round-trip, business-class tickets to you-know-where. . . . The Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego will serve a different special menu every night from Dec. 24 through 31 at varying prices, beginning with an English feast ($38) and concluding with a four-course champagne-washed banquet ($95)--with such events as a 900-calorie “thin” night ($27) and a “Dolce Vita” night ($40) in between. (Be forewarned, though: The Inn adds a mandatory 17% service charge onto all tabs, except that for their Christmas Day buffet.) . . .. The Towers restaurant in the Surf & Sand Hotel in Laguna Beach presents a Christmas Day buffet ($22 for adults, $12.50 for children) and a big-deal New Year’s Eve dinner ($65). . . . A prix-fixe Christmas dinner, served from 3 to 8 p.m., will cost $27.50 for adults, $17.50 for children, at the Bel Air Sands Hotel. . . . And Sabroso in Venice, though closed as a restaurant for the evening, will offer a variety of take-out New Year’s Eve menus, at $15 per person and up (and for $5 an hour more, one of their staff will come along to make fresh tortillas as fast as you can eat them). Similar menus are offered throughout the holiday season.

KEEPING THEIR EYES PEELED: Husband-and-wife chef-and-pastry-chef team Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton, formerly of Spago and (briefly) New York’s Maxwell’s Plum, are back in L.A. looking for a site on which to open a restaurant of their own. No news yet on exactly what kind of food they’ll do: “We want to find the right location first,” says Silverton, “but it will definitely be a joint project between the two of us.” Meanwhile, Peel is doing a bit of catering, and both are filling in now and then at Spago.

RUDE FOOD: Just in case you missed an article that ran in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere a few weeks back, Journal staff writers Kathleen A. Hughes and Laura Landro had some uncomplimentary things to say about some prominent local restaurants. In a piece on restaurant rudeness, Hughes and Landro told of someone being insulted at Le Chardonnay for having presumed to call at 6:45 one evening and asking for a table the same night (she got it, incidentally). They also told of having a confirmed reservation at Spago canceled by Spago because “there are too many people here”; they also recounted restaurant horror stories, offered by various sources, about Rondo, Chianti Cucina and the Palm and, in New York, Palio and Aurora.

The interesting thing is that, in almost every case, when restaurant owners or managers were confronted with these reports by Hughes and Landro, they denied the very possibility that such a thing could have happened at their establishment, or blamed it on some troublesome employee long since dismissed. As I’ve noted in this column before, I think most restaurant patrons will tolerate almost anything--long waits for reservations, garbled orders, etc.--if they are treated with politeness and respect (even a bit more of both then they might deserve sometime), but very few of them will tolerate rudeness for very long, no matter how famous or good the restaurant might be.

And, as I’ve also noted, I suspect that most owners and managers are quite well-meaning in this regard--but that not very many of them supervise their staff, and above all monitor the attitudes and manners of their staff, the way they ought to.

HAPPENINGS: The Irvine Ranch Market celebrates the opening of its newest store, in the Walnut Village Center in Irvine, through this afternoon, with special holiday entertainment. . . .

The Seventh Street Bistro downtown hosts a cocktail reception for the nonprofit ECF Art Center (dedicated to developing artistic abilities in mentally retarded individuals of all ages) today from 4 to 7 p.m., featuring champagne and holiday hors d’oeuvres for $40 per person. . . .

Longtime Times restaurant critic Lois Dwan, Patrick Terrail of Ma Maison and the Hollywood Diner and entertainer/restaurateur Sonny Bono are on the dais at the annual Golden Fork Awards presentation at the Palm Valley Country Club Monday evening.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: A new publication called L.A. Delivers is a biannual neighborhood guide to restaurants and other services offering home delivery in the L.A. area. Information: (213) 876-4545.