Haute Cuisine Is the Big Star at Gala Benefit

To the maxim that “two heads are better than one,” the UC-San Diego Cancer Center Associates would add the affirmative corollary, “Yes, because you can eat twice as much.”

After the guests at the Associates’ 10th annual “Celebrities Cook for the UCSD Cancer Center” had their preliminary dinner Saturday evening, they sat down to a second meal. This is the general pattern at the Celebrities Cook events, but the effect was heightened by the recruitment of a truly stellar cast of nationally known chefs who served up a full buffet of Italian hors d’oeuvres in advance of the formal, seated dinner in the Champagne Ballroom at the Sheraton Harbor Island.

That the one amateur cook in the group, electrochemist Giovanni Caprioglio, is known internationally less for his skill with a skillet than his expertise in hazardous-waste disposal, added amusement value to the elaborate feast spread out by Nancy Silverton of L.A.’s red-hot Campanile, Christian Rassinoux of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Laguna Beach and a dozen other highly regarded chefs and sous chefs.

Fund-raising volunteers and professionals who have not yet learned that the quickest way to a donor’s checkbook is through his stomach might note that in the aggregate, the dinner series has netted more than $2 million, with about $115,000 added to the total Saturday. Chairman Carrie O’Brien regarded the earnings figure, as well as the guest list of 510 (large, and up from last year) with some relief, given the current, difficult market for galas and other high-ticket events.

O’Brien suggested that her good fortune owed to the party’s title “Mangiamo!” (which the committee gleefully translated as “Let’s eat a lot !”) and to the theme, “A Night in Tuscany,” which she described, not too coyly, as “appetizing and romantic.”

So the evening was not just Italian, but Tuscan, which implies Chianti and risotto and beans, all present in abundance. The mood was set in the foyer by a group of young women who whirled through peasant dances to the mute critiques of fruits and vegetables piled in the grocers’ crates that flanked the ballroom entrance.

Many guests’ noses twitched rabbit-like when they entered the ballroom, perhaps less at the sight of the heaped carrots than at the aroma of oil-crisped garlic that roiled through the atmosphere like some sort of gourmet incense. It was virtually impossible to pinpoint the source, since garlic figured in most of the dishes prepared at the 10 green-and-white striped cooking pavilions arranged against opposing walls.

The guests had the first of their full-course dinners at these booths, crowding perhaps most thickly around the station where Vincent Guerithault of Vincent Guerithault’s on Camelback in Phoenix cooked up caldron after caldron of lobster ravioli in a creamy goat cheese and basil sauce.

The throngs were nearly as frantic at the booth manned by Carlo Middione of Vivande in San Francisco, where the specialty, tiny “nests” of polenta stuffed with Gorgonzola, proved that cornmeal mush is susceptible to more than one interpretation. Other stations offered a galantina of duck by Martin Woesle of Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe; artichoke frittata by John Orsino of the Sheraton’s Merlano restaurant; truffled mussels from Rugger Gadaldi of San Francisco’s Etrusca, and bruschetta by Donna Scala of the Piatti restaurants in Yountville and La Jolla.

Each chef was recruited by a different past chairman of “Celebrities Cook,” who as a group were the event’s special honorees. Founder and multiple chairwoman Anne Otterson missed “Mangiamo!” due to her son’s graduation the same day from UC Berkeley, as did 1989 chair Cheryl Rohde, who gave birth the previous week. But others were present, beaming and eating, including Jerrie Strom, Marie Olesen, Marilynn Boesky, Gigi Haynor and Pamela Wischkaemper. A memorial was made to the late Liselotte Terkel, 1985 chairwoman, represented by her husband, Michael Terkel.

Following the onslaught of appetizers, guests sat--at tables Tuscanized by ivy topiaries, girded with fruit and set in terra cotta planters--down to a simple four-course dinner of wild mushroom risotto, green bean and artichoke salad, grilled veal chops with lentils and an Italian dessert plate. They washed it down with wines donated by the Consorzio del Gallo Nero of Florence, Italy, the consortium of vintners who lay sole claim to the production of genuine Chianti. Dancing during and after dinner, to a group called Shine It On, worked as a sort of aerobic digestif .

In early years, the event showcased the abilities of local amateur chefs, who competed with sometimes wonderful, not infrequently weird concoctions judged by a celebrity panel of international food experts. The advent of professional chefs did away with the judging, and Saturday’s streamlined ceremonies were headed by restaurateur and San Francisco Chronicle food columnist Narsai David, who informed the audience that, “We may live without conscience, we may live without books, but civilized man cannot live without cooks.”

The guest list included Cancer Center President Maurice Kaplan and his wife, Charmaine; America-3 sailing syndicate chief Bill Koch and his wife, Joan; Peggy and Peter Preuss; Flo and Rik Henrikson; Audrey Geisel; Denise and Mitchell Lathrop; Terry and Doug Paul; Sally and John Thornton; Lee and Frank Goldberg; Sheri and Ben Kelts; George and Patsy Leopold; Barbara and Bill McColl; Virginia and Jack Thomas; Mary and Bruce Hazard; Joan Charleson with John Barbey; David Rubel; Diana and Eliezer Lombrozo; Lyn and Howard Heller; Bridget Breitenberg; Joan and Neal Kline, and Mary and Marco Walshok.

There may have been less glamour to the menu served the previous day at the San Diego Marriott for an American Diabetes Assn. fund-raiser, but there was an undeniable cachet to the group that served it.

The fifth annual Celebrity Waiters Luncheon brought out the latent talents for service of a list of volunteer hash-slingers that included County Supervisor George Bailey, City Councilman Ron Roberts, television actress Jean Smart of the “Designing Women” sitcom, Greg Harris of the San Diego Padres and more than a dozen personalities from local radio and television stations.

The waiters, each assigned to a table sponsored by a business, law firm or medical group, perspired lightly as they hefted trays of food and drink across the wide expanses of the hotel’s outdoor Coronado Terrace. Unlike guests who have to sing for their suppers, the servers were expected to perform any necessary gambit to coax tips from their tables, a required chore met in differing ways by former San Diego Charger Louie Kelcher, Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer and KSDO-AM announcer Ron Reina.

(Maxine Mahon of the California Ballet may have been recruited for her ability to throw the large number of servers with two left feet into proper comic perspective.)

Robin Brenizer chaired a committee that included Sandy Jones, Lois Kolender, James Geschke, Sherrill Leist, Cecily McNeil, Elizabeth Mills, Penny Steele, Marge Palmer, John Colwell and Jacquee Fabrizio.