Winter of Discontent at Four Seasons

Joseph Seppi Renggli, who has been executive chef of New York’s famed Four Seasons--one of the most famous and respected restaurants in the country--for some 17 years, has been dismissed from his post.

Renggli, reached recently at his Upstate New York home, says simply, “From one minute to the next, they told me they don’t need me anymore.”

According to some reports, he was to remain with the Four Seasons as a consultant until the end of the year--but, says Renggli, ‘I left the restaurant a month ago, and so far they haven’t called me.” Though he has remained friendly with the establishment’s proprietors, Tom Margattai and Paul Kovi, Renggli adds, “I guess I couldn’t get along with the younger group”--presumably meaning manager Alex von Bidder and Grill manager Julian Niccolini.

The Swiss-born Renggli first came to the United States in 1966, to work for the Restaurant Associates group--which then owned the Four Seasons--as chef at the now-defunct Latin-American-themed Fonda del Sol. Now, he says, after a week in May in New Orleans, cooking at a Cajun food festival with Paul Prudhomme, he will go back to work for R.A.--this time as executive chef for the American Harvest and Sea Grill restaurants in Rockefeller Center. His replacement at the Four Seasons is his longtime assistant, Christian (Hitch) Albin (also Swiss-born), who formerly held the title of kitchen chef. Ironically, Albin’s own new assistant will be Stefano Battistini, who has been chef at the Sea Grill.

Asked for a comment about Renggli’s departure, Paul Kovi replies, “There’s not really much to add to the published reports. We have great respect for Seppi, but the time came for the separation in a long marriage. Really, we just found that we have to go in a different direction, in a different style.” He adds, though, that it was Renggli who first raised the possibility, about two years ago, of partially retiring from the kitchen.

Shortly before Renggli’s dismissal, critic Jane Freiman, reviewing the restaurant in New York Newsday, had demoted it from three stars (“excellent”) to one (“good”). Though she quite rightly described Renggli as “one of the first kitchen superstars,” her review was otherwise filled with words like sodden , flavorless , meager , greasy , hideously overcooked , and sickeningly sweet-- and she concluded that the place was “a culinary legend that is running the risk of becoming a myth.” Some observers have suggested that this review was the last straw, finally prompting Margattai and Kovi to give Renggli his walking papers. “No,” says Kovi, “that’s not the way it happened. But the article was basically a correct one.”

WE’D RATHER BE EMPTY: Camelions proprietor Marsha Sands, her son Gene and Provencal baker Maite Lombard have very quietly opened Pastis in Topanga. The restaurant, now serving breakfast and dinner, features homemade breads and pastries, assorted pastas, whole fish roasted Provencal-style in an open fireplace, and other specialties of the south of France. Though Pastis is already jammed with Topanga locals who have been watching the space for months in anticipation, it is apparently attempting to keep a low profile. When one Topanga resident called up to ask if the place was indeed in business, whoever answered the phone replied, “Well, we’re open but we’d really rather you didn’t come in yet.” And Marsha Sands herself, taking such reticence one step further, told this column flatly, a few days after Pastis opened, that it had not yet opened.

SALT AND PEPPER: Some of the area’s best chefs--including Patrick Healy of Champagne, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken of City Restaurant and Border Grill, Claude Segal of Ma Be, Michel Blanchet of L’Ermitage and Roland Gibert of Tulipe--get together with great California wineries such as Acacia, Stags Leap, Vichon and Far Niente to cook up a benefit for the National Kidney Foundation. The event is taking place today at the Westwood Marquis from 3 to 6 p.m. Tickets are $125 each. . . . Roy Yamaguchi, former chef at Los Angeles’ Le Gourmet and 385 North, and now owner-chef of Roy’s restaurant in Honolulu, will prepare a multi-course menu featuring Hawaiian products at Champagne in West Los Angeles, this Tuesday, May 8. Price of the dinner is $42 to $52, depending on main course. . . . The culinary arts department of Glendale Community College hosts a fund-raising dinner to raise funds for the completion of its new laboratory, May 18, at the school. Hugo Molina, executive chef of Parkway Grill, is scheduled to cook a four-course dinner for the event. The price is $60 per person, including wine and entertainment. . . . From Spain in West Los Angeles now serves three-course dinners featuring the dishes of Spain’s Catalan region, Monday through Thursday evenings, for $19.95 each. . . . The Seventh Street Bistro, downtown, has introduced an “American Bistro” menu at lunchtime daily, featuring appetizer, main course, and dessert, plus a half-carafe of wine, for $18.50 per person. . . . And Riccardo’s Ristorante is new in Culver City, serving “gourmet Italian/Continental cuisine.”