SCAM AND EGGS

It was, I believe, Michael Caine as Alfie who once announced that “Everybody’s got a fiddle.” He was not, I hasten to explain, proposing that violins were ubiquitous. He was using fiddle in the sense of a swindle, a lifting-of-greenbacks-from-the-till.

The restaurant business, of course has long been sort of a fiddle heaven; the possibilities are positively a la carte . A waiter at a popular little Italian place in Hollywood, for instance, was seen doing it this way recently: He would deliberately leave one or more items off the check--items which didn’t come directly from the kitchen (i.e., coffee, wine, antipasto from a dining room buffet, etc.) and thus which didn’t have to be recorded on a kitchen ticket for the chef’s reference.

He would then present the bill, accept payment by credit card, and subsequently return to the table apologetically to point out the missing charges. To avoid having to go through the credit-card paperwork, he would add, would the diner mind paying the outstanding balance in cash? Few diners minded, apparently, and the waiter was able to pocket the money. The system worked fine for a while, apparently, until the enterprising lad made the mistake of pulling the same trick in the presence of two different food-business professionals who subsequently compared notes. The proprietor was informed; the waiter was sacked; the antipasto started appearing on checks again.

What should you do if you suspect that some similar scheme is being perpetrated in your presence? That’s up to you, of course. It is clearly a delicate matter, especially if you’re not sure that something funny is going on. But, as one of the aforementioned food professionals points out, after a good meal, a bald-faced fiddle can leave sort of a bad taste in your mouth.

TIP-BITS: I saw a bumper sticker in West Los Angeles the other day reading “I TIP 15%-20%”. (Yeah, but do you brake for sales tax?) . . . And a cartoon in a recent issue of the New Yorker portrays a waiter with a startled look on his face passing a table at which a lone diner is sitting, in front of a dish with a few coins in it, with a sign saying “Your tip so far.” . . .

FIRST WINE AND NOW THIS? The good people of Bordeaux, France, who have been forced by circumstance (and good wine making) to acknowledge the existence of California wines in recent years, will now probably have to admit that we can cook, too. From the June 22-26, at the 1987 edition of VinExpo, the world’s largest international wine show, held biennally in the great French wine capital, three seasoned chefs from the northern reaches of our state (and all of them associated, at one time or another, with Chez Panisse)--Catherine Brandel, Tod Koons and Judy Rodgers by name--will run a “California grill.” They’ll prepare a panoply of contemporary California specialties and vintages from 20 California wineries and will presumably help the French to swallow the notion of good food from the Golden State. . . .

NEW: Miami Spice, featuring Cuban specialties and seafood, and open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, has just debuted at Lincoln and Washington boulevards in Marina del Rey. . . . The Shanghai Garden has recently blossomed at the Airport Park Hotel in Inglewood. . . . Chan Dara, the popular Thai restaurant with branches on both Larchmont and Cahuenga in Hollywood, has opened a new outpost on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles. . . . And Texas Jacques Diner is new on Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills.

OLD: Robaire’s on La Brea celebrates its 35th anniversary this month, making it (say the proprietors) the city’s oldest French restaurant still operating under the original ownership and at the same location.

OLD AND NEW: Gypsy, the veteran Indian restaurant in Santa Monica, has moved up 4th Street a bit (from 1215 to 1341) to new and slightly larger quarters. The restaurant notes that it has had the same chef for 15 years.

THE GREAT, THE GRAND AND THE ULTIMATE: The latest in an apparently never-ending series of “great” public meals--this one modestly dubbed “America’s Ultimate Dinner”--is scheduled for July 12, to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and its affiliated agencies. The idea is to have 10 chefs (each one of them no doubt greater than the last) in each of 10 cities cook up a formidable repast more or less simultaneously; live entertainment, big-name wines (with 10 “host wine makers”), and a private satellite link-up will season the pot. Famous names like Jean Banchet, Gabino Sotelino, Alain Sailhac, Jean-Louis Palladin, Moncef Meddeb, Georges Perrier and our own Jean-Francois Meteigner (L’Orangerie) and Jean-Claude Bourlier (Le Dome) are among the participants. Jesse Sartain, director of the California Gourmet Society’s “Grand Master Chefs” (these being presumably even better than mere great chefs) program is coordinating the project. It will be, he promises, “the grandest culinary event in the history of our nation.” Oh my. The cause is a good one, to be sure, and some of the food (and wine and entertainment) will doubtless be first-rate. But five-score chefs and a satellite don’t have very much to do with dinner, if you ask me. Perhaps rock music, being a large-scale spectator sport to begin with, lends itself to such desperate extravagance; cooking doesn’t. This sort of thing is hoo-ha, not cuisine. It would be nice if this dinner were indeed “ultimate,” in the sense of being the last of its kind. Yet I doubt that it will be, and anticipate even ultimater events in months to come. Meanwhile, I personally recommend sending a donation to the children’s center (1835 K St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, 20006) and spending July 12 at your favorite burger shop or sushi bar instead.