COVER STORY : COMMENTARY : The Lost Art of the Meal

Eating is the most private pleasure. What takes place inside your mouth is an entirely personal matter. While most sensual indulgence requires the presence of other people, at least in the imagination, eating can always be enjoyed in solitary splendor.

This made food the perfect recreation for the Reagan years. For much of human history, great cooking has been appreciated as an art form, but this was different. In an era when self-indulgence was seen not only as a virtue, but as positively patriotic, eating was transformed from a natural act into a status symbol. During the ‘80s, the simple process of putting food into your mouth came to be considered art. People went around saying, with perfect seriousness, “We eat wonderfully.”

“I’ve spent $2,000 in restaurants in the last 10 days,” one big eater proudly told The Times in the mid-’80s, bragging of flying across the country just to eat dinner. “Most people simply can’t spend three or four hours eating,” boasted another, as he chronicled the hard work that went into his orgies of eating. This was a person who talked of “preparing” to go out to eat the way others cram for big exams, a person who lauded his friends by saying, “They ordered very well,” a man for whom a good dinner was not merely a meal, but a “score.”

The effect on restaurants was cataclysmic. The ability to eat well requires, first and foremost, a venue in which to eat. With the eating stakes raised to such heights, a bad meal became a serious social gaffe and fewer people were willing to take a chance on doing the cooking themselves. “The kitchen is becoming the most unused room in the house,” we read in article after article, as more and more people went out to eat.

Suddenly, the very choice of a restaurant attained an unprecedented importance. “Where shall we eat?” became a loaded question. Knowing about a great new chef gave you some points; knowing the chef personally gave you more. Restaurants were transformed from social halls into temples of gastronomy. Chefs, once low-status kitchen workers, became high-status priests. People who five years earlier didn’t know or care to know the names of the people who prepared their food were suddenly begging them to come to their parties.

“I can feed people anything,” said Jonathan Waxman, chef at Michael’s during the halcyon years (with its big brash prices, Michael’s was the archetypal restaurant of the ‘80s), “as long as it’s different from what they ate the night before. In other cities eating is the prelude to the evening’s entertainment. In Los Angeles, it is the evening’s entertainment.”

To keep his clientele amused, Waxman went in search of the best of everything. He and his colleagues scoured the globe for new ways to titillate their patrons; suddenly the world was their supermarket. This had a certain silly side, but it did wonderful things for the food in Los Angeles. While the status seekers were hunting for gastronomic thrills they were changing the taste of the nation.

They were such a hungry bunch--hungry for new flavors and new experiences and new ways to spend their money on food. Prices were big, portions were small--which only made it easier to eat more of everything. Meals stretched from the classic three courses up to nine, 10 or 11. The rich and powerful used the table as a way to one-up one another. “ Huitlacoche’s wonderful,” one foodie would say to another, having found a restaurant that imported the exotic corn fungus from Mexico. “That’s nothing,” his friend might loftily reply. “I’ve found a chef from Japan who’s certified to sell fugu , the deadly blowfish. One slip of the knife. . . .”

Everything about eating became more dramatic. Truffles got bigger. Olive oil got more virginal. When caviar could no longer come from Iran, people started importing it from China and producing it in Oregon. Potatoes, so boring in white, were suddenly seen in yellow, pink and purple. Food’s mission was to startle, amuse, surprise.

Chefs, eager to please their patrons, did more than go looking for new ingredients; they went looking for new cuisines. They ate in all the ethnic places and came back with new ideas. Suddenly Thai spices, Indian ideas and Guatemalan products were found on upscale menus. Then chefs began inventing new cuisines, blending traditions. We began to see the strangest concoctions on our plates. Thai-Mexican? Japanese-Italian? Why not? Going out to eat had never been so much fun.

And then came the ‘90s. The bubble burst. And everything changed.

It wasn’t just that hard times hit. Oh, sure, real estate slumped, expense accounts were cut, and some people lost their jobs. Still, Southern California is home to many of the world’s richest people, enough to fill hundreds of fancy restaurants every night of the year. But with the end of the ‘80s even the people who made obscene amounts of money stopped spending it on food. Big-deal meals started to seem embarrassing.

Conspicuous consumption, of food at least, became a social taboo. Fancy food made everybody feel a little guilty. People who once bragged about flying across the country for dinner were now bragging about discovering cheap little restaurants down the street. Those who once devoured caviar by the case were now singing the praises of barbecue. Good bread became a major indulgence. Women dripping with real diamonds would wander into bakeries and say things like “I feel so embarrassed to be spending $7 for a loaf of bread.”

For people who genuinely like to eat, this new austerity is not a lot of fun. The rich and hungry have abandoned eating as their favorite sport, and great restaurants are failing all around us. It’s nice that there are so many affordable new places, but it would be nicer to know that every restaurant wasn’t a clone of one that already existed, that there was still some passion going into the kitchen and excitement coming out of it.

The rich are dressing down and extolling the virtues of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Good for them. A reaction to the excesses of the time was probably inevitable. But whatever the reason, eating in L.A. in the ‘80s was terrific fun, and the foreseeable future looks a lot less delicious.