MEAT LOAF MANIFESTO : Your mother used to make it; now everybody does. : Old favorites. The man who made it chic. Tips from an opinionated chef. : How a Simple, Homey Dish Achieved Fame in the Big City

In 1984, Carl Lewis won four Olympic gold medals, Ronald Reagan won a landslide election, and AT&T; broke itself up. The big news in the world of food?

Meat loaf.

In March of that year Arizona prisoners sued the state for, as one local paper put it: “Meat loaf torture.” The penal meat loaf was force-fed to “incorrigible” inmates. This, the suit grumbled, was cruel and unusual punishment . . . and possibly unconstitutional.

It was also the year Leonard Schwartz created the meat loaf recipe for Venice’s 72 Market Street. It was a recipe that made him famous and meat loaf respectable, even chic. Seven years later, sitting in his office at Maple Drive where he is now more restaurateur than chef, Schwartz is still a bit puzzled--and pleased--about the fuss made over such a simple dish.

“Craig Claiborne came to Los Angeles to get my meat loaf recipe,” Schwartz says, shaking his head. “He stood there at this typewriter we’d set up on an ice cream freezer for him--he doesn’t like to write anything longhand--and he had me make the meat loaf. It was a real honor.

“Then Good Morning America flew me all the way out to New York for the express purpose of making meat loaf on national television.”

Before the Schwartz loaf, conventional wisdom held that a loaf’s place was in the home (occasionally it would get as far as the local diner). At the time, to put meat loaf on the menu of an upscale, celebrity-owned restaurant like 72 Market Street seemed, well, brave. And it was an idea that Schwartz himself didn’t like when it was first presented to him.

“I’d always associated meat loaf with home cooking . . . lousy home cooking,” Schwartz admits. It was Market Street’s then-novice restaurateur, actor/director Tony Bill, who told Schwartz he wanted meat loaf on the menu.

“You have to understand,” Schwartz says, “I’d just come from a series of jobs with French restaurateurs--people who would never serve burgers or chili, and certainly not meat loaf. So my first reaction was, ‘How am I going to convince (Bill) that this is not a good idea?’ “But Tony’s point was that people who go out to eat all the time--this is back in ’84 when people were eating out the time--missed home cooking. It was a good insight.”

Market Street served not only meat loaf, but hamburgers and chili, as well as the nouvelle dishes that L.A. foodies were coming to expect from their favorite restaurants. It was one of the first restaurants to serve home cooking in an environment with which the growing restaurant class felt comfortable--an art-filled, trendy, upscale environment.

Market Street was not alone. Meat loaf was the American food movement--American chefs reinterpreting regional dishes the way nouvelle cuisine chefs had in France--carried to its logical extreme.

“My mom made meat loaf,” Schwartz says, “and all my aunts made meat loaf. Each of them had their own way of making it and I loved every one. They didn’t have remarkable recipes, though. There was the basic canned tomato sauce version--that was Aunt Bertie’s. I remember she cooked it in a baking dish, not a loaf pan, and would pour the tomato sauce over it. My mom made one with kind of a variation on pot roast flavorings--with Lipton’s onion soup mix. And then I had another aunt, Aunt Gloria, who did a sauce with fresh onions and carrots that was actually quite nice. She was probably the best cook in the lot.”

These might be the loaves that inspired Schwartz, but they are nothing like the meat loaf he serves to customers.

“Grandmothers may not want to hear this, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a professional cook, if he or she sets his mind to it, can come up with a better chicken soup or meat loaf recipe than someone’s grandmother.”

Schwartz decided that if he had to serve meat loaf he would make the best one possible--one with, as he says, “polish.”

“The first thing I decided was to use a blend of meats,” Schwartz says. “Rather than veal, which is often used in meat loaf for reasons I don’t quite understand, I decided to go with pork. I mean, I love veal, but it isn’t particularly rich in flavor. And since I was going for something spicy and intensely flavored, I knew veal would just get lost in it.

“And instead of using regular pork, I got the idea of using pork sausage. It has its own seasonings and a pretty high fat content, which makes the meat loaf much more flavorful and moist.

“Then I started playing with the spices. I’ve always thought cumin and oregano worked well together, so those are prominent. The other thing that makes this meat loaf special, I think, is the fact that we cook the vegetables a long time before we mix them with the other ingredients. This changes the flavor of the vegetables and actually caramelizes them, which gives the meat a sweetness. It also eliminates any water moisture from the vegetables, which dilutes the flavor of the meat loaf.

“Another thing I thought about was the sauce. I initially played with a classic flour-thickened American gravy, but in the end I didn’t think gravy had enough polish. It finally dawned on me . . . why not just make a reduction sauce? The one I came up with uses a lot of the flavors that are already in the meat loaf--in particular, peppers, herbs and garlic.

“And how to garnish it? It seemed completely obvious to me that mashed potatoes should go on the plate, no question about that. But I wanted a green also. In early ‘84, a lot of people were starting to use collard greens and beet greens, that sort of thing. So I experimented with that notion, and it worked, but I felt that the greens were similar to using the thickened American gravy--not enough polish. Ultimately, I chose sauteed spinach, but not served the way it would be served at home. We use a really big pan and get it really hot, like a wok almost, and we just quickly saute the raw spinach in a kind of Italian way with olive oil.”

The meat loaf that resulted (see recipe below) became one of Market Street’s most popular dishes. But when Schwartz opened Maple Drive in Beverly Hills in 1989 he didn’t want to bring the meat loaf with him.

“When we opened here I wanted the two restaurants to be very different,” Schwartz says. “I didn’t want any overlap of recipes. But what I found was a clientele demanding many of the same dishes on the menu at Market Street. The first of those dishes was without a question the meat loaf. They were shocked to not find it. Over and over we’d hear, ‘Where’s the meat loaf?’ I resisted it for a while, but after three or four months I gave in. Then when--how shall I put it?--when my partner and I split up and she went back to Market Street and I took over control of this restaurant, it became obvious that my signature dishes should be here.”

It can be said that Schwartz has now made peace with his meat loaf.

“It’s funny,” says Schwartz, “seven, eight years later, I still enjoy having meat loaf. I really do. It’s just one of those things that I think is really delicious.”