Serving Them Right : Gourmand Society Sits Down to Serious Eating at Ritz-Carlton

The napkin gets tucked under the collar, mes amis, not folded in the lap, because this is serious eating .

You can’t be sozzled and sit at this table, either, and if you haven’t finished your wine course by the time the corresponding food course is finished, too bad. Off with the wine. And absolutely no smoking until the cigars and the cognac come out.

No talk of business or personal affairs, politics or religion. No networking, no schmoozing. The one, consuming, passionate, soul-stirring subject was food.

Those were the rules, gentlemen, and if the solemn visage of Escoffier himself peering down from a large painting wasn’t incentive enough to get you to use the proper fork, then you could always deal with the sight of Escoffier’s great-grandson, Pascal, sitting at the table, along with the French consul general and a good handful of the most celebrated food pros in the county.

This was the semiannual dinner--Le Diner de Printemps--of Les Amis d’Escoffier of Southern California, the culinary equivalent of hitting the lottery on the first try or going straight to heaven without a detour. The group is the local branch of an international dining society dedicated to the appreciation and perpetuation of the classic food and techniques of Auguste Escoffier, the man who is still considered by many to have been the world’s greatest chef. And last Thursday, 28 of them came to the Grand Salon of the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point to worship at his altar.

The evening was the latest in a series of tasteful, and tasty, homages to the man known as “the king of chefs and the chef of kings,” the French innovator whose recipes and techniques formed the basis of much of the classic cooking of later years, even to the present day.

The society was begun in 1936 at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by a group of epicures, many of them former pupils of Escoffier, and the local chapter was begun in 1988 by the Ritz-Carlton’s general manager, Henry Schielein. An all-male organization according to the original bylaws, the society also supports a foundation that sponsors scholarships for students and recognizes fine teachers in the culinary arts.

(There is a single women’s auxiliary group, Les Dames Des Amis d’Escoffier, in Boston.)

The attire was black tie, but that didn’t include stuffed shirts. The before-dinner reception, fueled by Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blanc, grilled goose liver canapes and Beluga caviar on buckwheat blinis, was loose and convivial. Things got downright chummy during the initiation of a handful of new members, who received the red ribbon and medallion of the society. Schielein, as head of the local chapter, welcomed each inductee with a tap on the shoulder with a copper saute pan.

He pointed out, also, as the group sat for dinner--promptly at 8 “because this is an art and we have to respect the timing”--that the conversational rules printed on the menu were not meant to be stultifying, only guidelines to good behavior.

This allowed everyone to talk a bit of shop: Maj. Gen. Harry Blot, commander of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, held forth on fighter aircraft while Escoffier discussed a film about his great-grandfather he hopes to score.

But the arrival of each new glass of wine, each new piece of culinary dazzle, yanked everyone back to the evening’s Topic No. 1.

If there was a nervous man in the room, it had to be Christian Rassinoux, the Ritz-Carlton’s executive chef and the architect of the dinner. He had begun the selection of the dishes, he said, two months ago and had begun preparation of some of them the day before. As he sat near the head of the table, next to French Consul General Gerard Coste, 12 of his staff chefs were hopping in the kitchen.

“A dinner like this,” said Rassinoux, “is like being an orchestra conductor. You get one chance.”

Do all-stops-out presentations like this make him edgy? He smiled.

“Every time. It’s a lot of work, and you do have a lot of last-minute preparation. It’s very intense. But the young cooks love it. They see things they’ve never seen before.”

So, in most cases, do the guests, because the elegant meal is in one sense a kind of seminar on preparation, presentation and technique for a crowd that most definitely knows its stuff.

“I think I do both: analyze and enjoy,” said Michel Pieton, the executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach. “I always like to take some tips. You’ll see something and you’ll say, ‘Hey, they do that better than I do.’ You always look for new ideas.”

New? Yes and no. Many of Escoffier’s recipes date from the late 19th Century, and about 25,000 of them are contained in his definitive, and last, cookbook, “Ma Cuisine,” published in 1934 shortly before his death (all the dishes that filled the eight-course meal Thursday were original Escoffier recipes from the book). Devotees of today’s nouvelle cuisine, popularized by Paul Bocuse, might be horrified to read the ingredient lists; many of the dishes relied heavily on eggs, butter, cream and flour as, among other things, sauce thickeners.

“In the old days,” said Pieton, “you’d eat a big Escoffier dinner and say, ‘Gosh, it was good! But I’ve got to sit down!’ ”

Pascal Escoffier, a composer who scores films, but who confessed to “a deep appreciation for good cooking at home,” remembered reading his great-grandfather’s last book.

“In ‘Ma Cuisine,’ ” he said, his eyes widening, “all the proportions are just humongous.”

Also, said Rassinoux, dinners in Escoffier’s time could be mammoth affairs, with up to 25 courses or more.

Thursday’s meal, however, was limited to eight, with a wine course accompanying each. Also, Rassinoux often eschewed fat and cholesterol-laden thickeners in favor of producing a rich sauce by the more time-consuming technique of reduction of cooking juices and other liquids. For the fourth course, for instance, Homard en Parmentier (a delicate lobster-and-Finlandia potato combination), the sauce appeared as a reduction of Chardonnay and flambeed Cognac.

Still, the meal was largely classic Escoffier, with such exotics as young rabbit wrapped in two kinds of endive and braised in honey, wine and vinegar; risotto with quail and white truffles; and an Anjou pear charlotte.

“Escoffier put out the basics,” said Rassinoux. “Probably 70% of what is used today was picked up from Escoffier. It’s all how you adapt it. If you take it one course at a time, it can be relatively light.”

The wines were equal to the food they were chosen to enhance. Vintages included a 1989 Vouvray Moelleux, a 1988 Louis Latour Montrachet, a 1976 Chateau Mouton Rothschild and a 1988 Chateau Rayne Vignea Sauterne.

The show played well. Each time Rassinoux explained the food course at hand and Jim Allen, the vice president of the wine division of Southern Wine and Spirits, rhapsodized about the wines he and Rassinoux had chosen as the accompaniment, applause and appreciative Aaaaahhhh’s erupted. This was palate indulgence that had a roomful of veteran pros making delighted yummy sounds with their mouths full.

The diners finally stood up en masse almost exactly four hours after they sat down at 8 p.m., sighing deeply, cigars balanced in one hand, shining glasses of cognac, port or Madeira cradled in the other, satisfied and blissfully happy. The man in the painting on the wall, the white Croix de la Legion d’Honneur gleaming from his chest, remained impassive. His great-grandson, however, grinned broadly.

“ This, “ he said, smoke curling gracefully around his face, “was a dinner. “