Promoting a Delectable Form of Art

Ah, pass the smoked salmon and tartare rolls, have some braised vegetables and finnan haddie balsamico vinaigrette, a skewered squab and liver sage sausage, a lamb noisette with crispy yams and onions on potato pancake and then, of course, finish up with a poached apple with Roquefort creme anglaise.

Welcome to the culinary art. Or, to be more precise, to food raised to the level of art, as promoted by the American Institute of Wine & Food and as practiced Wednesday night at the Santa Monica Art Deco home of Adele and Ira Yellin.

Restaurateur Michael McCarthy (with his slicked-back hair, looking like a period piece in this former home of Dolores del Rio) was effusive in talking about the 7-year-old institute, which aims to “elevate fine dining from a craft to an art.”

Gathering in the white tent in the Yellins’ back yard were founders or prospective founders of the institute (that means they have contributed $5,000). Among the crowd, Vincent and Coral Price, McCarthy’s wife, Kim, Valentino’s Pierro and Stacey Selvaggio (he left the party briefly to give someone directions to Spago) and Bon Appetite’s Jan Weiner.

Trumps’ Michael Roberts was chef for the dinner, cooking over a mesquite barbecue set up between the house and the tent. How dramatic--but not enough for the irrepressible Roberts.

“I want my cooks to yell and scream--like the Cirque du Soleil,” he announced. The guests, with few exceptions, filed by without more than a second glance at the soon-to-be second course. “Maybe black-tie people don’t want to talk to cooks,” Roberts kiddingly announced.

The very tall Julia Child (the guest of honor of the evening) seemed pleased to greet and line up with the baseball-hatted cooks and chef. (Chefs and cooks don’t say “cheese”--they say “lemon crown” for the perfect smile for photographers.)

Crosby Ross, the institute’s executive director, congratulated the guests on helping gastronomy become “an actual academic discipline.” He outlined the various big and little conferences and meetings that were coming up.

Then everyone settled down to practicing the fine art of eating and drinking.

AUTHOR, AUTHOR--Nancy and Alan Livingston have a lot of friends. And a lot of them turned out Wednesday night to celebrate the publication of his new young adult novel, “Ronnie Finkelhof, Superstar.” (The sedate-looking Livingston knows all about such things, having been a top exec at Capitol Records, NBC and 20th Century Fox.)

A soft sculpture of “Ronnie” sat at a lonely table. But look at the real live people who were celebrating--Fred and Joan Nicholas, Judi and Gordon Davidson, Erlenne and Norman Sprague chatting it up with former Atty. Gen. William and Jean Smith, the beautiful Barbara Rush and Warren Cowan (the most attentive and loving ex-husband in town), Henry and Ginny Mancini, Roger and Joanne Kozberg (she’s the new president of the Music Center’s Blue Ribbon, a post Nancy Livingston once held), Bill and Keith Kieschnick, Angie Dickinson, Peggy Parker and Walter Grauman, Connie Wald, Terry and Dennis Stanfill and Marvin and Barbara Davis.

The possessor of one of the most beautiful sets of legs in town, Giney Milner, was telling Barbara Davis about hurting her foot recently in a fall at 20th Century Fox. It became clear that all the business sense in the Davis family isn’t in one person, as Barbara quickly replied: “We don’t own that anymore.”