Dining Review : Fund-Raiser Is Taken to New Lights

Chef Joachim Splichal seems to have an inexhaustible supply of rabbits when it comes to Art of Dining, the annual fund-raiser he coordinates for the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

I refer to the rabbits a magician pulls out of a hat, not the ones we eat spit-roasted.

Sunday night marked the seventh time that Splichal has been at the helm of this dinner (held, as always, at the Four Seasons Hotel), and each year it has been a most interesting diversion. The difficulty lies in keeping the menu both fresh and relevant, something Splichal manages on schedule.

This year’s theme was “French,” and Splichal knows that modern French cooking is light, with elements of the Orient interspersed throughout. His first course, pounded ahi tuna with a gazpacho mousse, recalled Spain as well, and the components were combined in a way that only such a highly imaginative French trained chef as Splichal would combine them. It worked for me.

As he does every year, Splichal assembled a team of star chefs, but this time he limited his group to chefs based near or around the Pacific Coast (the farthest flung was Christoper Gross of Phoenix). Splichal’s rationale made perfect sense: “We chefs and our restaurants need public support, and there isn’t much sense in bringing a chef here from Chicago or New Orleans when so many the guests won’t get to eat in their restaurants.”

Another change: The dinner was smaller and lighter than ever.

“In past years,” Splichal noted, “people started getting tired by the fourth or fifth course.”

This dinner totaled six courses, including dessert, and most people had little trouble polishing them off.

The chef also told me that the rolls, which came from Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles, were consumed rapidly: Eight hundred were gone before the second course was served. Never mind that the crusty, chewy rolls were too hard for some of the more orally sensitive supporters, who longed for a softer bread with which to clean their palates.

The ahi was followed by a wonderfully light galantine of rainbow trout and salmon with asparagus, the conceit of chef Martin Woesle of Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe. Next came what seemed to be the evening’s biggest hit: a smooth, lightly spiced corn chowder with pheasant quenelles from the Four Seasons Hotel’s executive chef, Michel Pieton. (Pieton also prepared the superb dessert, a light mascarpone cheesecake with plums.)

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After an auction and recess came a grilled scallop with salad of California red lentils from Julian Serrano of Masa’s in San Francisco, and a delicious faux filet of beef with a Middle Eastern grain called fareki, from chef Gross of Phoenix.

As ever, the wines were donated by Robert Mondavi of Mondavi Winery and this year were described to the throngs by Eric Hansen, also of Mondavi. Thankfully, the slide-o-rama format of viewing the dishes was abandoned, leaving the chefs to describe them from the podium. That’s a change that I hope sticks through to next year.

* ANN CONWAY

The Newport Harbor honors collector Jack Shea at Art of Dining. E4