FOOD REVIEW : New Group Does Proper Honor to Ritz, Escoffier

Cesar Ritz and Auguste Escoffier were a duo that went together like foie gras and champagne, like love and marriage. Together, they had a profound effect on the hotel and restaurant industry that hasn’t faded in more than 100 years.

Monday night they were together again--nearly a century after their heyday--at a dinner for the newly formed Southern California chapter of Les Amis d’Escoffier, hosted at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point. The rules of the dinner were simple: no politics, no religion, no smoking and napkins to be firmly tucked under the chin. It was a memorable occasion.

Les Amis d’Escoffier is an eating society devoted to the ideal that the great chef Auguste Escoffier himself promoted--namely the art of good living. The hotel’s executive chef, Christian Rassinoux, trained meticulously in the classical manner. He faithfully reproduced several of the master’s recipes without alteration, proving his own mettle in the process just as he did a year ago with Babette’s Feast. Nouvelle cuisine certainly has its place, but without Escoffier and his artistry, the modern style would never have been developed.

The dinner itself was remarkable, not only for its attention to detail but for how well its conceits held up.

A first course, le consomme Sapho, was a light broth with little quenelles of the minced game floating on the bottom, amid exquisitely thin slices of black truffle. Next came a chaud-froid of tiny quail, stuffed with a forcemeat made from its own liver, in an aspic of apple and white wine.

That was followed by sole Walewska, one of Escoffier’s more famous recipes: a roulade of Dover sole with a whitefish mousseline in the center, in a lobster reduction with three tiny shrimp and black truffle on toast points for garni. If you think that they don’t make ‘em like that any more, you’re dead right. Who has the time?

After a wonderfully slushy sorbet made from Sauternes, a main course of veal arrived. Under the veal was a soubise, a puree of rice and onion that some of the guests took for potato. There is just no substitute for technique.

Several local professionals and self-styled gourmets were present at the all-male, black-tie gathering, which hotel general manager Henry Scheilein plans to extend to women in the future. Meetings will be held on a biannual basis, each one culminating in a grand, fin de siecle -style dinner with rare wines, authentic recipes and lusty conversation.

Because this is food unsuited to mass production, Scheilein said that membership will be limited so as not to compromise the rigid cooking standard. For more information, call the hotel at (714) 240-2000.