WHEN ‘GREATNESS’ GRATES

On the cover of the November issue of Washington magazine is a photograph of an attractive, young blond woman wearing chef’s whites, a broad smile, and a pair of large, orange plastic earrings in the shape of a sunfish; she is Kathy Casey, chef at the Seattle Sheraton. At the top of the cover, in large red letters, is a headline announcing the subject of the story to which Casey relates. It reads: “GREAT NORTHWEST WOMEN CHEFS.” The article itself is an interesting analysis of the importance of female chefs in contemporary Pacific Northwestern cooking. (If you’re interested in Los Angeles’ women chefs, see Listings, Page 90.) The cover blurb, on the other hand, is nonsense.

Why? Because there are no “great Northwest women chefs”--something I feel safe in saying even though I know the food of only about half of the women profiled in the article (Casey not among them). And lest you think I’m somehow singling out women chefs for my disdain, I hasten to add that I doubt sincerely that there are any “great” chefs in the Northwest, male or female--and, for that matter, I doubt that there are very many in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, or anywhere else. Being great is not the same as being good, or even very good.

Greatness implies lasting stature in one’s field, and longevity in it--and suggests, I think, that one’s contributions have a certain timelessness inherent in them. Greatness is also something that is properly applied by public acclaim or studied critical consensus--not by p.r. agents or by magazine editors in search of a “sexy” story tag. In an era when a recording artist with one hit record becomes a “superstar” and anybody who can strum a guitar and chew gum at the same time is termed a “Renaissance man,” I suppose it’s only to be expected that superlatives will be applied promiscuously to chefs. But to do so--to call a youngster who can make pretty good food a “great” chef--cheapens not only the chef’s profession but the very concept of greatness.

Let’s be reasonable, for heaven’s sake. Let’s call a good chef good and a very good one very good (or superb, or excellent). But let’s not have “Great Chefs of Wherever” dinners at which 15 or 20 accomplished cooks are worshiped as if they were Picasso or Stravinsky. Let’s let the idea of greatness mean something again, and be worth striving for.

DRESSED TO DILL: Charles Perry, who covers Orange County restaurants for this paper, has dropped me a note to warn me of an insidious new trend he’s spotted in restaurant menu language. “It started a couple of years ago,” he writes, “when restaurants took to listing ‘dilled’ potatoes and ‘dilled’ salad dressing, as if adding some dill was a specialized operation, like sauteeing, that deserved extra credit. Now I notice the new menu at Bistango speaks of ‘cidered turnips.’ “There’s no use trying to buck the trend,” Perry suggests. The “Participleans” have won, he says, and we should all start thinking of dishes in the same way. Among his proposals? jammed toast; gingered, almonded duck; doubledecked, the worksed hamburger; cheesed and tomatoed pizza, unanchovied; Dianed steak; Alfredoed fettuccine; and, of course, for dessert, a chocolated cherried whipped creamed bananaed split! His was a humored letter, to be sure. . . .

BYE-BYE BHALLA: Paul Bhalla’s Cuisine of India, on Lindbrook Drive in Westwood Village, has closed. It was the oldest Indian restaurant in Los Angeles at the time. The reason for the closing? The same old story: The lease was up and the new lease would have been prohibitively expensive. “We closed with mixed emotions,” Bhalla says. “We left our telephone connected, and people are just so upset .” All is not lost, though: The Santa Barbara branch of Bhalla’s remains open--and, says Bhalla, he is looking for a new location in L.A.

SALT AND PEPPER: The Crocodile Cafe will open in the Commons in Pasadena in late February, with an American menu presided over by chef Norman Cheng of Parkway Grill fame--with a special breakfast menu created by Marion Cunningham (who helped set up the well-known Bridge Creek mostly-breakfast restaurant in Berkeley). . . . Montego is new on Fountain in Hollywood, serving Caribbean cuisine . . . . Seattle-based Restaurants Unlimited, owners of Cutter’s in Santa Monica and Stepps on the Court downtown (plus many other restaurants in other precincts of the American West), opens Simon & Seafort’s Fish, Chop & Oyster House in Long Beach tomorrow. . . . Chef Annie Rousseau has left the Bel-Air Sands Hotel. . . . Spago in West Hollywood has commissioned artist Andy Warhol to create labels for two custom-made wines, a Chardonnay and a Cabernet, to be sold at the restaurant (and at a handful of places, as yet undetermined) . . . The Chefs de Cuisine Assn. of California and the Business & Professional Women’s Executive Forum present the first annual CCAC Food and Wine Festival next Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Ambassador Hotel. Some 50 chefs and 50 wineries will be represented--and a six-foot television screen will be set up for those more interested in the Super Bowl than the soup bowl. Call (213) 385-2941 for information. . . . Two wine makers’ dinners are scheduled for Jan. 26: Monique in South Laguna presents wines (and the wine maker) from Kalin Cellars and a six-course dinner for $65 per person; and Cafe Pierre in Manhattan Beach offers the wines (and conversation) of Mike Grgich of Grgich Hills Cellars and a five-course meal for $40 each. . . . L. Kay Ginsberg will make dinner reservations (and recommend restaurants for special occasions) and supply theater or movie tickets through her Cuisine & Cinema Select agency. Her price is $3 per restaurant reservation, $10 per person (total) for movie tickets, and $8 per person over the base price of theater and concert tickets. Call (818) 795-7520 for details.