A DEPARTURE FOR ALICE’S RESTAURANT

The French magazine Cuisine et Vin de France recently celebrated its 40th birthday by asking its readers to choose the 10 best chefs in the world. For the most part, the replies were not startling.

Although the chef voted best in the world, Fredy Girardet, is Swiss, the list was primarily dominated by Frenchmen. Joel Robuchon was second, followed by Michel Guerard, Alain Senderens, Georges Blanc, Alain Chapel, Pierre and Michel Troisgros, Michel Bras and Paul Bocuse. But there was a tie for 10th place between Paul and Marc Haeberlin, Jacques Pic and Alice Waters, the lone American and sole woman on the list. Waters laughs away the idea. “Clearly,” she says softly, “that’s ridiculous.”

Maybe not so ridiculous, for even if Waters rarely cooks these days (Paul Bertolli has been the chef at Waters’ Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, for the past few years), she continues to be widely influential and extremely innovative. Last week, for example, her quintessentially California-Mediterranean restaurant served its first Chinese meal.

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Waters asked writer and cookbook author Bruce Cost if he would prepare a meal. Cost agreed, and within hours of the announcement the $75-a-head dinner had sold out.

When Bruce Cost moved to California from New York in 1981, his reputation preceded him. He had been for many years a student of the legendary Chinese cooking teacher Virginia Lee, and he inherited her uncompromising attitude. My first taste of Cost’s food was memorable; I had never tasted food quite like his. Since he does not have a restaurant, I became one of the many people eager to shop, chop vegetables and do dishes any time he was willing to cook a meal. And shopping with this tall Caucasian can be an experience; he will stand in a Chinatown butcher shop for hours if need be, coolly waving away any cuts he considers inferior. Through sheer stubbornness, he inevitably gets what he wants.

But although he is a fine cook and an expert caterer, Bruce Cost is not accustomed to cooking in restaurants. Why would Waters take such a chance? “Alice runs the restaurant like a gallery,” says her husband Stephan Singer. “To Alice, people are resources. Bruce Cost is the best Chinese cook there is, and so she asked him to cook this dinner.”

Eaten in that setting, the dinner was a revelation. For in a restaurant whose hallmark is simplicity, one that favors food that tastes primarily of itself, it was startling to be presented with so many dishes that demonstrated the art of transformation.

Consider the first dish: Sichuan squid and pork kidneys. It tasted neither like squid nor kidney but like some strange and wonderful vegetables that caressed the insides of your mouth. The dominant flavor was Sichuan peppercorns, for the kidneys had been soaked until they became a substance more of texture than of taste. The squid too was mostly textural; the combination was like mixing velvet with silk, with a few fungi thrown in for a bit of subtle crunch.

Next there was tea-smoked squab, the skin crisp and crackling, the meat as dark and intense as chocolate. This was served with a contrasting salad made of finely minced coriander, peanuts and little bits of pressed preserved bean curd.

Eggplant was slick with ginger and garlic, hand-pulled into fluffy shreds. In contrast to this dark, soft, rich vegetable was a white on white dish made of very fine strands of translucent jellyfish, bits of chicken and white radish. The two dishes presented light against dark, chewy against soft, one complex smash of flavors against another of clear, distinct tones.

Then came crisp irresistible little bites of sesame-crusted deep-fried shrimp toasts. These were followed by an incredible soup. At first bite, you got an impression of coconut, coriander and peppers along with a few soft slivers that were clearly winter melon. But as you ate the dish, more and more subtle flavors appeared. The rich chicken stock had an undertone of lemon grass, chiles and gallingale (a member of the ginger family). There was also a briny echo of nuac mam (Vietnamese fish sauce). If I knew some place to get this soup, I would order it twice a week.

Next came quail eggs surrounded by a very fragrant mixture of chopped lamb mixed with cumin and peppers. These had been deep fried, so that the crisp spicy meat crust played against the bland smooth eggs that they enclosed.

Then there was a total change of pace as won tons arrived in a bright green sauce. The tender little dumplings were filled with a mousse of chicken and topped with a surprising pesto made of Thai basil, whose flavor is more mint than basil.

And then, after all these little bites and dishes composed of complex layers of flavor, came two simple and substantial dishes. First, there was a whole steamed fish topped with a Shanghai-style sauce of scallions, ginger, bamboo shoots and lots of black mushrooms. The flesh was as soft as butter, the sauce cool and smooth. Finally there was the incomparable richness of fresh bacon, a meat with which Cost often ends his meals. The sweet pork had been slowly braised in a mixture of rock sugar, Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, star anise, garlic and ginger. Surrounded by little hearts of bok choy, the dish left you ready for the clear icy taste of the bitter citrus sorbet that followed. Crunchy honeyed pecans climaxed the meal.

“Bruce was wonderful,” Waters said when the meal was over. “He really prepared the kitchen to do this kind of cooking. He came in and gave little classes.”

Cost wryly added: “But I overlooked one thing when I forgot to show them how to cook rice. It never occured to me that Chez Panisse has never before had an occasion to cook Chinese rice.”