The Edible Year: Trendy Is Out, Ethnic Is In

This was the year when everybody was wrong about restaurants. According to last year’s predictions, we were supposed to go crazy for Caribbean, bonkers about bistros serving homey French food and continue our love affair with regional American cuisine. But Cha Cha Cha is still the best Caribbean restaurant in town, a real French bistro has yet to make an appearance, and although the South has risen restaurant-wise and diners keep opening at a frightening pace, the Cajun craze is definitely on the wane.

But something happened this year. Something encouraging and delicious. The year’s leading restaurants followed no trends and set no fashions--they were content to be unique. The best of them--Citrus, Champagne, Matsuhisa, Four Oaks, Tumbleweed--all marched out to their own tune. Each had a menu dependent on only one thing: the talent and inclinations of the chef/owner. And isn’t it interesting, after all the Italian madness of the last few years, that when you think of good new Italian places that opened this year, only Fresco, Tuttobene and Angeli Trattoria come to mind?

Something else happened this year: For the first time, we began to really explore the ethnic diversity around us. We live in a city filled with an extraordinary number of authentically ethnic restaurants that do not condescend to the American palate. And for years we have been a little bit afraid to try them. That is begining to change. We have finally worked our way through what I call the “starter restaurants”--places that tone down the heat, turn down the garlic, leave out the innards and gently introduce us to all these new and exotic flavors. Now we are ready for the real thing.

You can see both these changes reflected in the lists below. As the year ends, I asked our reviewers to name two restaurants. First, I asked them to choose what they considered to be the best restaurant they had reviewed during the year. Most of their choices are more surprising than my own. Personally, I pick Citrus, for while other restaurants may be wonderful, this restaurant is pointing out a whole new direction for restaurants in Los Angeles. This is French food filtered through a California sensibility. It is light food, beautiful food, food that is unswervingly original. Despite occasional annoying waits at the door and the almost inevitable din, Citrus is a constant surprise and delight.

And, second, I asked them each to choose their favorite restaurant. I wrote about this myself a few weeks ago, so I won’t repeat the details. But I think you’ll find that our critics’ choices are eclectic, numerous (few were content to stick with two), far-ranging and rarely predictable.

Sort of like restaurants in Los Angeles in 1987.

Max Jacobson

1--Everyone would like to predict the next trend in high-fashion dining, but as long as there are chefs like Nobu Matsuhisa around, that’s going to be a chore. Who could ever imagine a kitchen like his?

Chef Nobu has taken a well-established form--sushi--and turned it topsy-turvy: hot sea urchin in an ice cream cone wrapper made from seaweed; scallops and flying-fish roe in an orange; pasta made from squid. Even his most derivative creations are graced with garlic or other Japanese anomalies. Japanese traditionalists may be outraged, but Los Angeles is delighted. Just drive by Matsuhisa on La Cienega any weekend and look at the lines. If Nobu bought out next-door Bistango, he’d probably fill the place on a Friday night.

2-- Genius may be the most overused word in the language at present, but, if it exists for a chef, it applies to John Sedlar. His Southwestern cuisine can be regarded as a great American art form and, as a chef, Sedlar has the eye of a Georgia O’Keeffe, the intellect of a J. Robert Oppenheimer and the imagination of a Navajo medicine man. I’m amazed every time I eat his food.

The last time I ate at St. Estephe in Manhattan Beach, Sedlar prepared a tick-tack-toe mosaic out of smoked salmon, capers, chopped egg and chopped onion, and a Peking duck crispier than I’ve ever had on either side of the Pacific. His signature dishes--the radicchio tacos, the salmon Painted Desert--still steal your breath, even though derivatives abound. If Sedlar’s food ever gets put in a time capsule, bring me along for the ride.

Charles Perry

1--In 1987, the kitchen at Antoine in Newport Beach, which had been organized by the famous French chef Jacques Maximin, was reorganized by the considerably less famous Gerard Vie, best known as the former chef to a former French prime minister. Fortunately, apart from some innocuous sauces based on celery or carrot juice, the more Vie changed Antoine the more it has remained the same. It is still Orange County’s headquarters for old-fashioned French table luxury: flan of foie gras of unearthly richness and lightness, indescribably plush sauteed endives, exquisite apple ice served in a hollowed-out apple with cider sauce.

2--The menu at MacArthur Park in Huntington Beach is easygoing. You want potato skins? Grilled quail salad? Liver with bacon? Lobster sausage in green tomato sauce? I like MacArthur Park because you can come in a mood for just about any kind of food, or even in a mood for no particular food at all. The place is so spacious and relaxed, full of natural light and cool sea air coming off the Peter’s Landing Marina, you could have a good time just gazing mellowly at pleasure boat masts.

Colman Andrews

1--Though I don’t review Los Angeles restaurants regularly anymore, I do try to keep up with them--and of all the new ones I’ve managed to put (all too visibly) under my belt this year, I think the best of all is Citrus. It’s a good-looking place with a nice sense of energy--clean and Californian and downright festive when it’s filled (as it usually is). The service is good, and the wine list is unpretentious and even sometimes reasonably priced. Best of all, owner/chef Michel Richard’s food is bright, smart, finely crafted and almost uniformly delicious. His crab-and-Savoy-cabbage coleslaw, sauteed scallops with fried Maui onion shreds and potato “risotto” with scallion sauce are already classics of a sort. More recent Richard creations include smoked salmon filet with mushroom sauce, whitefish with celeriac, short-rib ragout, veal with roasted chestnut sauce and caramel Napoleon with licorice ice cream. Richard’s combinations are often unusual, but they nearly always work superbly. This is food grounded not only in good technique but in good food sense.

2--Citrus, obviously, is one of my favorite local restaurants. Others this year have included Champagne, Tumbleweed and the Four Oaks Restaurant (all of them newcomers in 1987), as well as such old-timers as Chinois on Main, Spago, Valentino, City, Rebecca’s, Sabroso, the Darwin, 72 Market Street, L’Orangerie, Akbar, Madeo, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Talesai. The place I’ve eaten at the most, though (that being as good a definition of “favorite” as I can imagine), is most probably the West Beach Cafe. I like it because they’ve got great burgers and other sandwiches for lunch (plus terrific French fries and Caesar salad). I like it because dinner items, especially various preparations of steak, pork and fish, are always imaginative and handsomely accoutered. I like it for the wine list and the selection of single-malt Scotch and various brandies, for the background music and for at least some of the art on the walls. Most of all, I like it because I feel comfortable there, known and welcomed--and almost everybody’s favorite restaurant, I think, is the one in which he or she feels most at home.

Robin Green

1--I wrote good things about the Beaux Tie Grill in North Hollywood earlier this year, and when I went back recently I found I liked it just as much. I like driving so far out on Lankershim you think you’re halfway to Oklahoma and then arriving at this funky-chic place. I like, too, the hip, friendly people who run the place. And I like the food--Jamaican/Creole/Californian, I guess you’d call it, food that’s not afraid to be hot. I like the catfish strips that melt on your tongue, the grilled shrimp and anything served in their pele sauce, which is made of several kinds of pepper smoothed out by cream. I like the prices too--cheap.

2--There ‘s nothing surprising about my favorite place to have lunch this year: Michel Richard’s Citrus. What’s not to like? The light on the patio makes everybody look like they just got back from the Golden Door. The food’s great. And the waiters remember what you had last time. With me, that’s not difficult. I always start with a tuna burger. Don’t let the name put you off. This is the most delicious sandwich ever invented: rounds of toasted egg bread with the crusts lopped off; inside, tuna grilled rare with some kind of tasty mayonnaise stuff on it.

L.N. Halliburton

1--It’s not that the food is so extraordinary. It’s not. But each time I’ve been there, the mix of taste and ambiance have taken me just a little out of this world. I can’t wait to go back to the restaurant at Wheeler Hot Springs (six miles north of Ojai) again. There’s a good list of California wines, a kaleidoscope of gentle flavors, a completely romantic setting and a gracious staff . . . not to mention those spectacular baths.

2--I am definitely playing the field these days. There’s no single haunt you’ll find me at night after night. But I notice that I’m frequently at these places: I get a jones for Chianti Cucina’s veal chop and Primi’s porcini risotto. And I head for the Caesar salad, baked potato (and the booths) at Musso & Frank. When I want smoky eggplant and perfectly cooked rice, Shamshiri is the place to go. Dinner at the West Beach and breakfast at Duke’s always give me a lift. Noma, my favorite neighborhood restaurant, is packed and intimate, the sushi consistently fresh. Reddi-chick, a stand at the Brentwood Country Mart, is my takeout choice. Where else can you sit around a brazier, eat messy, luscious chicken wings in an outdoor corral alongside kids, delivery men and well-known screenwriters making believe it’s 1955?

Linda Burum

1--I’m constantly returning to Pho Hoa in Chinatown just because their pho is better than any other place I know. I’ve become a pho junkie, so even when I’m not working I brave the Santa Monica Freeway just for a bowl of this luscious soup-noodle and salad combination. For a great Vietnamese restaurant with a more general menu, I choose Anh Hong in Garden Grove, where in pleasant surroundings you can get a meal as good as one at Chinois--for about $10.

2--Because I am constantly driving all over the county to survey unheralded eating spots, I am eternally grateful to have Santa Monica’s Chinois just a few minutes’ drive away. But convenience isn’t my primary motive; I’ve been known to go to extreme lengths to eat well. I love light food with clean and fairly intense flavors. I think the food is some of the freshest in the city, both literally and conceptually. It’s adventurous without going off the deep end. And it is confidently and knowingly executed. I am convinced these virtues have kept Chinois out of the parade of passing fads. The food will likely be influential for years to come.

I am less picky about ambiance than food. This is fortunate, because the din at Chinois is frequently at headache-producing levels. Almost everything I’ve said about Chinois could also be said for Primi in West Los Angeles, which is a little quieter.