The Blurring of a North, South Taboo

I had a friend once who claimed there was an unspoken social rule in California. That rule said that culture, whether high or low, did not commute from one end of the state to the other. For example, the San Francisco Opera had not and never would perform at the Hollywood Bowl. Likewise the Beach Boys never made it big at the Fillmore.

This cultural law has especially applied to the culinary arts. Chefs of the North kept to the North, and vice versa. The restaurant kitchens of San Francisco and Los Angeles might be invaded by waves of Italians or Cajuns, but not by cooks from the other end of the state. No one crosses the Tehachapis.

That explains why I was struck by a mild sense of transgression last week when I picked up the San Francisco Chronicle and read a piece of news. Wolfgang Puck, our very own, had flouted the taboo and was mounting a raid on San Francisco. And nothing timid either. He had marched into the midst of downtown with a million-dollar monument to the Puck style, a restaurant known as Postrio.

It raised questions. Had some barrier fallen so that the high eaters of the North would accept food from a man who has become the symbol of the Los Angeles style? Had that invisible line between the North and South begun to blur? Was this good news or bad?

Years ago I had written a profile of Puck and still had the private number at Spago. I called. A woman of uncertain age and accent answered, and as I announced my purpose she cut me off. Puck was not in Los Angeles, she said.

Yes, yes, I answered, eager to seem in the know. Maybe he was up here in San Francisco, hmm . . . ?

“I don’t know where Puck is,” she answered. We both paused in the face of this conversation stopper. Finally she spoke.

“He is here and there, “ she said. “He fluctuates.”

Clearly something had changed in the six years since I had spent time with Puck. He did not fluctuate then. Mostly he prowled the fish markets, and once we drove all the way to San Diego County so he could visit a farm that grew tiny carrots and zucchinis. He filled his station wagon so full that the rear sagged and we cruised back to L.A. like lowriders.

Of course, that was before all the talk shows, before the benefits, before the television ads for AT&T.; I picked up the phone and called Postrio, open only a week or so. But Puck wasn’t there either. Maybe later, the factotum said. She would take a message.

All right, I thought. If not Puck, then I would consort with the competition. There was always Jeremiah Tower, the chef who might be regarded as Puck’s equivalent in San Francisco. Tower has appeared in a few ads of his own, and I figured he had the most to lose if Puck stole the show in San Francisco. I dialed his restaurant, Stars.

The message taker chuckled when I mentioned Tower’s name. “Jeremiah is away,” she said. She would take my name.

Now, there is a short list of chefs who could be regarded as fellow travelers with Puck. After Tower, there is one other in the Bay Area and that is Alice Waters, the stern enforcer of California cuisine at Chez Panisse.

She’s not here, the young woman said. It was a bad week, she said. Waters does check in between 2 and 3, but the young woman could make no promises. There were many other calls.

I put down the phone. Who were these people? Certainly they were no longer chefs. Chefs are easy to find, just look in the kitchen. Then I realized that no one really expected to find Jeremiah Tower in the kitchen at Stars. Just like no one pretended that Puck cooked their meal at Spago.

But if they are not chefs, then what? Had they become media-borne creatures entirely, sort of cultural franchisers to anyone with $100 to spend on dinner? It was not clear. The afternoon passed and Jeremiah did not call. Alice did not call. I went to supper in Chinatown.

When I came back, the message light on my hotel phone was blinking. Puck had called. At 8:12 p.m., from Postrio. He was in San Francisco after all.

Fearing the phone, I trotted the few blocks to the restaurant. It was a busy scene, three deep at the bar. In the distance pizzas were being shoveled out of the wood-fired oven. I found the young woman.

She smiled. Puck is not here, she said. He had visited earlier but had left for a benefit. She was not sure where.

I walked outside and tossed away my questions about cultural laws. Puck had moved somewhere beyond my reach. I pictured Puck in the old days, fingering the tomatoes at the farm. And I thought of him now, working the crowd at the benefit. Then moving on, into the air above, or the ether beyond, fluctuating.