His Work Is a Feast for the Senses : Ritz-Carlton Chef Is Artist Not Just in Kitchen

Like most artists, chef Christian Rassinoux thrives on inspiration, with a dash of anxiety thrown in for good measure.

His inspired cuisine has won worldwide praise during his 12 years as executive chef of the three restaurants at the Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point.

But first comes the anxiety.

“Sometimes, I’ll have a dozen menus to create for upcoming banquets and I will sit at my desk with my pen in my hand and nothing comes out. My mind is blank. I get depressed. Then all of a sudden, everything comes out,” said Rassinoux, a 49-year-old Laguna Niguel resident who speaks with a mellifluous French accent.

“You can try too hard. Simplicity is one of the best aspects of cooking; promoting the flavor of the main item; not trying to hide it with too many spices.”

In the hotel’s gourmet dinner restaurant, called “The Dining Room,” the roasted Maine lobster is taken out of the shell and then reassembled with something called Alsatian Gewurztraminer lemon verbena essence and vanilla bean pasta. It costs $44, a bargain when compared with the ounce of Beluga caviar, an $85 appetizer.

But even the most humble of vegetables that accompany some of the hotel’s exotic entrees reflect Rassinoux’s quest to find the precise balance of ingredients and cooking times.

“Too often in restaurants the vegetables are almost like rabbit food. They’re not cooked enough. But they should not be overcooked. They should not be mushy under your tongue. Vegetables taste so good when they’re cooked--just like pasta--cooked al dente,” Rassinoux said, referring to the Italian phrase that translates as “to the tooth.” “That’s where you get the full flavor.”

Rassinoux has the aesthete’s passion for all of the arts and spends much of his time painting when away from work. His medium is acrylics and his subject is faces.

“I paint emotions.”

Painting and mountain climbing are his release from the demanding duties of executive chef, a position that requires finesse in both food preparation and restaurant management. Rassinoux oversees 14 chefs and a kitchen staff of about 70 who prepare food for three restaurants, a poolside cafe, a lounge, banquets that can accommodate as many as 1,400 guests and meals served in any of the hotel’s 393 rooms. Many of the entrees are created by his chefs, but each must win his approval before it gets on the menu.

Before coming to the United States in 1975, Rassinoux traveled the world while working his way up the culinary career ladder.

“I was raised in France, and we’re not that big on spices. We are big on seasoning, but not on spices. I was introduced to spices when I worked in Asia and experimented there with different flavors. It was an evolution for my taste buds.”

When not sampling the cooking of the world’s best chefs during frequent trips overseas, Rassinoux tries to keep his everyday diet simple. He prefers a piece of fish and a salad for lunch, fruit and vegetables for dinner. He will not eat fast food.

He says his wife, Nora, is not an ambitious cook. “What she does, she does it well.”

Is she too intimidated to cook for him?

“Not anymore,” he said, laughing. “This is my profession. I don’t really expect her to cook like a professional chef.”

Gourmet cooking has changed significantly during the last decade in Orange County, Rassinoux said, because of the abundance of food items once hard to get.

“It used to be very difficult to find a lot of products. We used to have to bring radicchio over from Europe. Everything was imported. Now we have people here who grow about 15 types of baby lettuce. With this climate, you can grow almost anything in California.”

But excess can turn the taste buds numb, he said.

“The one thing I like about France is that there is more cooking that involves a seasonal product. In my childhood, I loved strawberries. I was waiting eagerly for the strawberries to come each June. I could smell them coming.

“Here, we have almost everything, but you can lose that sense of what makes something special. Now I eat strawberries every day, and maybe I have lost that love and appreciation for them. But if we don’t have assorted berries--raspberries, blackberries and strawberries--in our breakfast buffet every day, we will have unhappy customers. That’s the demand. In a way, it’s sad.”

When he visits his 76-year-old mother in Paris, she cooks him one favorite dish he does not regularly find in California restaurants: rabbit stew.

“I always know that on the day I arrive there, I’m going to have rabbit stew. She always fixes me the same thing, because I have such wonderful memories of it from when I was a kid. It brings back all the flavors of my childhood.”

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Profile: Christian Rassinoux

Age: 49

Hometown: Paris

Residence: Laguna Niguel

Family: Wife, Nora; two teenage sons

Education: Bachelor’s degree, philosophy, Lyce Charlemagne School (France); cooking studies at the Jean Ferandi Cooking and Charcuterie School while serving a three-year apprenticeship at Provencal, his father’s Michelin two-star-rated restaurant in Paris; bachelor’s degree, hotel and restaurant management, Lausanne Hotel Management School in Switzerland.

Background: Assistant chef, Peninsula Hotel (Hong Kong), 1971; cold food preparation and saucier, Westin Carlton Hotel (Johannesburg, South Africa), 1972-73; chef saucier and cold food preparation manager at two Michelin two-star restaurants, Hotel Scandinavia (Copenhagen, Denmark), 1974; relief chef/assistant to executive chef, Westin Hotel, Century Plaza (Los Angeles), 1975-80; executive chef, Westin South Coast Plaza, 1980-82; first executive chef of Westin Hotel in Ottawa, Canada, 1982-84; executive chef, Ritz-Carlton in Dana Point, since 1985.

Culinary standing: Past president and current vice president, French Chef’s Assn. of Southern California; president, Southern California chapter, Les Amis d’Ecoffier Society of gourmets and culinary professionals; recently named chef of the year by the Orange County Business Journal; made Chevalier in the National Order of Merit by French President Francois Mitterrand, 1994; named chef of the year by Le Toques Blanche International chef’s association, 1990.

On cooking: “Cooking is not just a job. It can be a form of art. The way I envision a plate of food is just like the creation of a painting. The creativity is really endless in the production of food. You take a recipe and transform it.”

Source: Christian Rassinoux; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times