RESTAURANTS : Now You Can Watch the Movie and Have Your Babette’s Feast Too

Because “Babette’s Feast” just won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, the adage about life imitating art is about to take on an entirely new meaning. As of tonight and throughout the run of the film in Orange County (it opens today at the Lido Cinema in Newport Beach), the same fantasy dinner will be served in the main dining room at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel. It is a far cry from another classic based on Danish themes--”Hunger,” by Knut Hamsen.

Danish director Gabriel Axel’s film is an adaptation of a far-fetched tale by Karen Blixen (a.k.a. Isak Dinesen) concerning two sisters, Philippa and Martina, daughters of an austere minister who live a life of piety and self-denial on Denmark’s barren, wind-swept Jutland peninsula.

The film’s climax is one of the great eating scenes in the history of cinema. If you are not planning to experience the dinner after you see the movie, ask for the largest bucket of popcorn the theater sells. I guarantee that you are going to get hungry.

In the film, Babette is a political refugee from France living in Denmark with two sisters. She has grown accustomed to the ways of an inward people accustomed to a simple life when she receives a bolt from the blue: 10,000 francs from a longstanding lottery ticket. She then sets about preparing the meal of a lifetime: turtle soup, blinis Demidoff, stuffed quail and baba au rhum for her amazed (but remarkably expressionless) guests. In the process she spends her entire fortune.

Chef Jan Pedersen, of La Cocotte in Copenhagen, was the first to recognize a potential gold mine in this dinner and spent more than a month researching recipes to re-create the dinner. “Mrs. Blixen had a vivid imagination,” said Pedersen, since the main course, caille en sarcophage , quail stuffed with foie gras and truffles in a puff pastry crust, is entirely the product of a writer’s imagination.

The Ritz-Carlton kitchen, under the direction of executive chef Christian Rassinoux, has made every effort to be faithful to Pedersen’s research. What the kitchen has created is somewhat of a fantasy itself.

“This is most definitely real turtle soup,” cries one of the incredulous guests in the film, but at the Ritz-Carlton, it most definitely is not. Turtle meat is contraband in California restaurants, so Rassinoux has ingeniously substituted minced alligator to complement the light, toothsome veal quenelles floating attractively in a wonderfully complex broth. It is easily the evening’s best offering.

Blinis Demidoff are little cakes with caviar and sour cream, and although the Ritz-Carlton uses an excellent sevruga caviar from Russia, the blinis at this dinner might as well have been made with Bisquick. They taste about as Russian as the pancakes I have been eating on Saturday mornings for as long as I can remember.

It is a pity that black truffles are as expensive as platinum because the one scene in the film that should make every gastronome in the theater hungry concerns them. Babette stuffs the quail with magnificent slices of rich foie gras and crowns her creation with two enormous slices of black truffle. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got my quail was to eat the head (as the general does in the film), and then go on a truffle hunt. The quail are from Sonoma, the fine foie gras from France, but the only truffles I found were tiny slivers in the sauce perigourdine.

The film is weighty, throwing out a lot of different messages. You may not see the point, but you are bound to be moved. Funny, because that is how I felt about the dinner.

This is a dinner that doesn’t make a lot of sense because it was cooked up by a Danish author who lived most of her life in Africa, not by an Escoffier or a Careme. It wouldn’t work at a three-star restaurant because in keeping with the spirit of the film, it is just too opulent and too weighty. Still, I think you will have a great time.

The Ritz-Carlton is a far more luxurious setting for the dinner than the humble house of the film. But look out over the Pacific Ocean and somehow the mood becomes as timeless as that of the movie’s gentle North Sea fishing village. Like the meal in the movie, this one is served on crystal, linen, lace, silver and china. And like the meal in the movie, several fine wines accompany the courses, which include salad, cheeses, rum baba, fruit and coffee. Expect to pay $75 per person without the wines, and $110 with them.

“Babette’s Feast” is being served at the Ritz - Carlton Laguna Niguel, 33533 Ritz-Carlton Drive, Laguna Niguel . (714) 240-5008. Reservations requested. All major credit cards accepted.