R S V P / ORANGE COUNTY : Chefs <i> de Resistance</i> : Master Cooks Whip Up a Feast for SOS OrangeAid Benefit

Calling themselves the “Orange County Ten,” a team of celebrity chefs from local restaurants donned white aprons and put on a winning feast to benefit the Share Our Selves OrangeAid Kitchen Project.

About 200 guests attended the fourth annual SOS dinner Friday at the Robert Mondavi Wine & Food Center in Costa Mesa. The $150-per-person benefit was expected to net $100,000 for the SOS kitchen in Costa Mesa. A small portion of the proceeds will go to Share Our Strength’s Taste of the Nation, a nationwide effort to end hunger.

Kitchen High Jinks

While preparing their feast in the Mondavi kitchen, the chefs enjoyed high-spirited camaraderie fueled by liberal amounts of wine.

“There’s nothing I can do to control them,” joked Jean Pierre Lemanissier, chef of Antoine and coordinator of the dinner with Michael Kang of Five Feet.

“All I can do is just make sure we don’t forget anything in the oven,” Lemanissier said.

This year, event organizers decided to coax the chefs out of the kitchen and put them in the spotlight. During a welcoming ceremony outside the center, the Share Our Selves van pulled up with horns blaring, and out came the chefs and their assistants. All were wearing their white smocks, and some were carrying glasses of vino.

Kang was singled out for his support of the kitchen. He has helped coordinate the dinners and recruit numerous chefs to the cause. . Karen McGlinn, SOS director, gave him an SOS leather motorcycle jacket.

The Evening’s Specials

The chefs chose a French-Thai theme for the five-course dinner, which was served by candlelight at tables decorated with birds of paradise on a bed of black pebbles and seashells.

Lemanissier and Pascal Olhats of Pascal prepared the first course, a chilled sea urchin soup with snails. Christian Rassinoux of the Ritz-Carlton and Jack Kalustian of Kayaki at the Pan Pacific Hotel followed with ravioli--folded filo dough filled with crab.

Alan Greeley of the Golden Truffle and Sarah Scott of Mondavi teamed up to make “parrot fish” in ginger paper, and Kang and Ted Gray of the Newport Meat Co. prepared a beef filet covered in a dome of ginger.

For dessert, John McLaughlin of JW’s at the Anaheim Marriott created a creme bru^lee and mango cilantro coulis, and Claude Koeberle of Creative Culinary Concepts prepared a Thai chili chocolate marjolaine.

Proceeds from the dinner will be used to upgrade the SOS kitchen, which provides food to the hungry. SOS hopes to offer classes on cooking and nutrition for the needy, as well as on-site employment training for positions in the restaurant and food service industry.

“This will help us have a fully operational kitchen,” McGlinn said. “We’ll be able to offer nutrition classes and teach people how to live.”

Missing from the gala was honoree John Martin, chief executive officer of Taco Bell, which sponsored the dinner locally. Martin was ill and could not attend.

Among the guests were Hal and Kay Rosoff, honorary chairmen; Ken Stevens; Ken and Marla Bird; I.R. and Suzanne Caraco; Gary and Sunny Waldron; Linda Schilling; Willie Rosoff; Jonathan and Jennifer Blum; Drew and Karen Warmington; Alan and Sally Gobare; Tom and Mary Catherine Payne; Aram and Therez Bassenian; Lauri and Mike Mendenhall; Jerry and Kathy Thompson; Bob and Margaret Nord; Mavis Costello; Ayres and Wendy Boyd; Frank and Jean Forbath, and Larry and Laura Ainsworth.