Heaven in a Handbasket for Picnic Crowd

If only there were an Amy Vanderbilt hot line. We have so many questions in the summertime. Is lobster and macedoine of vegetables too-too for an outdoor concert? Is it fitting to take poached salmon to the track? Is it horribly uncouth to eat a salad that has fallen onto the cake?

No toll-free number available, we turned to “The Complete Book of Etiquette.” “There are picnics and picnics,” Vanderbilt begins. Indeed. Chicken salad on a roll at Santa Anita is worlds away from sliced breast of duck with orange glaze at the Bowl. Chef Ryo Sato, owner of Chez Francois in downtown Los Angeles and Chez Sateau and Chez Sateau Patisserie in Arcadia, anticipates multiple hungers and different venues.

Chez Francois offers six three-course meals to go; they range in price from $20-$26.50. Although large and called “dinners” (and crammed with everything from a runny Brie to after-dinner mints), there’s no reason you couldn’t order one for lunch. Packed in sleek black boxes with sectioned interiors, they would be great to take on a plane. Even better, the food (except for dessert) lives up to its chic wrapping.

Most delicious was a very fine slab of moist poached salmon accompanied by a robust homemade pate and a delicate salad filled with red peppers and marinated vegetables. The combination of prawns and breast of chicken was also a succulent meal: The prawns were huge and juicy, the chicken was moist, winey and served with a perfect homemade tarragon mayonnaise.

A friend ordered the sliced breast of duck with orange glaze and we both poked away at the full-bodied, tender meat, scraped off the gluey orange “jam” and thought the prosciutto--served with watermelon and honeydew as well as cantaloupe--tasty but too thickly sliced.

For $22.50, I’d like the dessert to be, well, more adventurous. Now one gets a too-rich pastry or a thickly iced, silver studded or, worst, maraschino-cherried layer cake.

Maraschino cherries topped a number of pastries in our picnics from Chez Sateau Patisserie too, but there was also one perfectly acceptable not-too-sweet chocolate mousse cake. And even better, nine picnics ($6.50-$19.50) to choose from and two places down the road at which to eat: a grove of picnic tables outside the Los Angeles County Arboretum and the aforementioned Santa Anita racetrack.

A mere $6.50 bought a swell fruit salad, a cherry-topped pastry and a chicken salad so nondescript I kept eating it just to hunt down the taste. Picnic Italian Style, for $8.50 was a better choice with a large chicken breast that overshadowed its accouterments: canned olives and pimentos.

The marinated flank steak meal was wonderful: thinly sliced, heavily marbled and served with a buttery horseradish sauce, simply marinated zucchini and a dense, direct country pate.

When I realized the picnics were made next door at Chez Sateau, I followed my nose to the source and ordered several a la carte salads from their more august menu. Even though it was pleasant waiting in the cool room (someone was belting out “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” in the bar) I’d suggest you call in your order beforehand.

Warm duck salad ($9.50) was full of great duck, raddichio, endive, spinach, oranges and walnuts. Crusty, velvety sliced lamb salad ($9) with lace-thin marinated eggplant was succulent. La salade pecheur ($11.75) was a delicate mix of watercress, limestone lettuce, lobster and two types of shrimp.

Chez Sateau Patisserie offers a Deluxe Lobster Royale dinner for $19.50, which is a twin to Chez Francois’ version at $26.50. (You don’t get that gorgeous black box in Arcadia.) Keep this meal in mind in case you hit the daily double. But mind your manners. Remember what Vanderbelt says about alfresco dining: “Even where service is available . . . servants are not kept constantly in attendance to spoil the rural effect.”

Chez Francois, Arco Plaza, Level C, 555 S. Flower St., Los Angeles; (213) 680-2727. Picnic dinners available Monday-Friday. Reserve 24 hours in advance. All major credit cards. Parking: Validated after 5 p.m., Arco Plaza Garage, enter from 5th Street. Daytime validated parking at 400 S. Flower St.

Chez Sateau Patisserie, 860 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia; (818) 574-0702. Tuesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Sunday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Reserve picnics one day ahead. Cash only. Street parking.

Chez Sateau, 850 S. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia. (818) 446-8806. Open Tuesday-Sunday. All major credit cards. Valet parking.