STLYE / RESTAURANTS : REPASTS TO REMEMBER

It’s that time again, when critics look back at the past 12 months and try to put everything--in my case, more than 300 breakfasts, lunches and dinners--into perspective. It’s also the time everyone seems to ask me: “What was the best meal of the year?”

I find it hard to come up with an answer. I think of the sushi of well-marbled toro with a dab of freshly grated wasabi. The summer tart of fragrant white peaches set off with dense vanilla bean ice cream. The juicy pastrami sandwich served warm on a blustery November afternoon. The truth is, I ate more perfect dishes than perfect meals.

Better, then, to pose the question “What was the most memorable meal?” Because that kind of meal is more than a matter of flawless cooking. It require that the chef to hold your attention from start to finish, stringing together an entire sequence of satisfying tastes as well conceived as it is executed.

In response to this more pointed query, two meals spring to mind. The first was at Rex Il Ristorante. When Mauro Vincenti opened Rex downtown in the Art Deco Oviatt Building in 1981, I came for lunch with friends the first week. To most Americans at that time, Italian food meant pasta in red sauce, but Vincenti ushered in contemporary Italian cooking to Los Angeles along with the wines of up-and-coming Barbaresco producer Angelo Gaja, now one of the best-known winemakers in Italy. The gorgeous room in the former haberdashery, the superlative service, the food that was a distillation of what was going on in top kitchens in Italy--it all made Rex the city’s most exciting and sophisticated restaurant.

I’d been impressed with Vincenti’s chef, Odette Fada, yet dining at Rex in recent years just hasn’t been as thrilling as it once was. Then friends and I happened to eat there in October, the week Fada introduced a new menu. I read it slowly, savoring descriptions of the new dishes, plotting a strategy to explore its riches.

To start, we chose pigeon with black squid ink sauce and baby artichokes. At first, I thought it would be one of the strangest things I’d ever eaten, the gamey roasted bird played against the rich, almost silty squid ink and the vegetal astringency of the artichokes. But the dish grew on me, bite by bite. A companion scoffed at the mundane-sounding lentil soup and then could barely be persuaded to give up a taste of the sublime combination of gray-green Umbrian lentils, chunks of porcini mushroom and intensely flavored anatra, or duck.

Among the main courses were several wonderful choices. I loved the pristine sauteed scallops in a delicately perfumed prosciutto sauce that warmed and heightened their sweetness with its faint tang of salt. Piled in between was a delightful mix of fresh peas and tender green fava beans. A trio of dainty, beautifully rare and wild-tasting venison chops was swathed in a luscious red wine sauce spiced with clove. It was served with a single knodel, a fluffy, golf-ball-size dumpling of Austrian-Hungarian origin. Fada’s new menu also includes a marvelous aged Eastern Angus New York steak ribboned with fat. Alongside was a tiny bowl of acciugata, a Tuscan sauce of pounded anchovies and capers in extra-virgin olive oil that was simply terrific smeared on the steak, and golden potatoes that tasted as if they had been dug up that morning.

Fada, a slender Italian woman in her early 30s who worked with one of Italy’s great chefs, Gianfranco Vissani of Vissani in Umbria, has always possessed superb technical skills. Now with this thrilling new menu, she was cooking with real passion. I couldn’t wait to try the rest of the menu. But to my disappointment, two months later, I learned she had gone back to work in Italy. Replacing her is Gino Angelini, an experienced chef and cookbook author who comes from Hotel des Bains on the Adriatic coast of the Emilia-Romagna region. Fada’s menu will remain in place until spring, but he’ll be adding his own specials. However good Angelini turns out to be, and odds are he’ll be very good, I’ll always lament Fada’s departure.

Rex Il Ristorante, 617 S. Olive St., Los Angeles; (213) 627.2300. Dinner for two, food only, $68 to $140. Four-course tasting menu, $55; six-course menu, $70. Corkage, $18. Valet parking.

*

My other most memorable meal of the year took place at Spago, which is such a landmark that nearby apartments are touted in the classifieds as “Spago-adjacent.” The phrase is meant, no doubt, to conjure visions of the 13-year-old West Hollywood restaurant as your personal cantina. There you are, hosting friends at one of the coveted window tables, Tony Bennett to your right, David Hockney or Whoopi Goldberg a few seats down, and out comes a special little tidbit from Wolfgang Puck himself just for you.

Arguably the most famous chef in America, instantly recognizable to people who may not be able to recall the name of a single other chef, Puck is at Spago most nights, greeting customers, posing for pictures with starry-eyed first-timers while keeping things in check in the kitchen. Weekend, weeknight, the place has an energy that’s rare in Los Angeles. And the long line of chefs toiling over the pizza oven and the saute pans is just as entertaining as it was when Puck first introduced the concept of the open kitchen years ago.

Still, I’d always preferred Chinois on Main, Puck’s Franco-Chinese outpost in Santa Monica. .Too many items on the Spago menu, such as crispy quail in a cloying blood-orange sauce, relied on sweetness to make their point--and please the crowds. Spago always seemed more about stargazing and jockeying to get a good table than food. Just watch what most people are ordering: haute pizzas, pastas and salads. Yet Spago regulars would regale me with accounts of wondrous birthday or anniversary feasts and swear that when Puck cooks, the food is fabulous. Go one night and ask him to make a special menu, they told me. He’ll do it for anybody.

So I had a friend arrange a dinner for four with two days’ notice, making sure to mention that we eat anything and everything. I was disappointed that the first thing out of the kitchen was the familiar smoked-salmon pizza--you know, the one that’s not on the menu but everyone asks for anyway. It was, however, so delectable--its thin crust slightly smoky from the oven, spread with cool creme frai^che and velvety smoked salmon--that I have to admit that I would have been disappointed if we hadn’t gotten it.

Then came a splendid terrine of foie gras flanked by poached plums and pale pickled ginger. The puckery sweetness of the fruit brought our taste buds back to attention so that each time we took a bite of the foie gras, we were surprised once again by its richness. And you’d never expect it, but a heap of springy Chinese noodles, tossed with milky rings of fresh, tender squid and dressed in a searing-hot chile oil, made an beguiling transition.

Next was a small portion of risotto with white truffles. One of my companions, just off the plane that night from Piedmont, Italy, the home of white truffles, carefully sniffed the truffle shavings. “I just came from Alba, and these must be the first of the season,” he said. I’m happy to report that the sumptuous risotto, bathed in butter and broth and cheese, each grain perfectly separate, perfectly al dente, did those truffles proud.

Then we had fine little lamb chops from a Sonoma County farm, their flavor so vivid that we nibbled each right down to the bone. With them, Puck served a slice of dusky porcini and juicy Chino Ranch cranberry beans, the wild mushroom and the earthy beans a brilliant counterpoint to the lamb.

A sweet-sour plum tarte tatin brought the meal to a pleasing close. A swirl of deep violet plums on a buttery crust was set off by a diminutive ball of lemongrass ice, startling in taste and extravagantly scented, plus a tiny scoop of gentle ginger ice cream.

This personal, pared-down style of cooking is proof that while Puck may be one of the country’s most successful restaurateurs, he is, first of all, a cook. In fact, he’s notorious for showing up at any time at any of his restaurants and plunging right into the action. No need to wonder if he’s still got the touch.

Spago, 8795 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood; (310) 652-4025. Dinner for two, food only, $60 to $100 (more for special menus). Corkage, $16. Valet parking.