A Winning Game Plan

Josie Le Balch, who runs the kitchen at Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas--on everybody’s list of the best restaurants in Los Angeles--has a new feather in her cap.

The James Beard Foundation, named after the late chef and writer, invited Le Balch to New York to prepare a feast last month for the organization as part of its “Best Chefs of America” program.

The foundation promotes the culinary arts, as did Beard himself. Julia Child and the late Peter Kump, who ran a cooking school bearing his name in New York, founded the foundation after Beard’s death in 1985. It hosts numerous events almost on a daily basis in Beard’s Greenwich Village townhouse.

Le Balch dedicated her own event to her father, Gregoire Le Balch, who ran the restaurant Chef Gregoire in Sherman Oaks from 1972 until he died in 1983.

“I grew up in that place,” Josie Le Balch says. “When I got grounded as a teenager, I used to sit in the wine cellar to do my homework, and when my father died in 1983, I took over the restaurant and ran it until I went to Saddle Peak in 1985.”

About five years later, Le Balch left Saddle Peak to run the kitchen in the Santa Monica restaurant Remi. She returned to Saddle Peak in 1995, but may leave again later this year to found her own restaurant.

“I would probably stay on as a consultant,” Le Balch says. “Saddle Peak is my baby, and I want it to maintain its quality.”

The restaurant is known for Le Balch’s venturesome game dishes, so it comes as no surprise that game figured highly on the menu she put together for the Beard Foundation dinner.

The appetizers, for example, included a country-style game pate, salmon carpaccio rolls and pheasant confit strudel.

Le Balch’s entrees:

* Pan-seared New Zealand snapper with a citrus dressing and a seeded bread ring;

* Roasted rabbit loin with a warm calico bean salad including tomatoes and arugula;

* Quail stuffed with tart apples and foie gras and wrapped in smoked apple-wood bacon;

* Venison loin served with winter vegetables and a wild berry sauce.

Le Balch took her pastry chef Jonna Jensen with her to New York, along with roundsman Oscar Gomez to prep and help with the cooking. The event also reunited Le Balch with James Halper, who worked at the Saddle Peak kitchen during Le Balch’s first stint at the restaurant a decade ago, and who now cooks in Brazil. Chef Neal Frazer of Rix Restaurant in Los Angeles and Gary Hersch, a private chef in the city, also went.

In all, they cooked for some 80 people--not even close to the 250 or so for whom Le Balch cooks on a typical Saturday night at Saddle Peak.

Saddle Peak Lodge is at 419 Cold Canyon Road, just off Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas, (818) 222-3888.

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Fans of Andre Guerrero will want to know that his stint as chef at the new Signature Grill in Sherman Oaks came to a quick end Jan. 31--but he may resurface later this spring in Santa Monica.

In the meantime, he hasn’t disappeared altogether from the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley. He expects to do some consulting in the coming weeks with John Makhani, who runs Villa Piacere in Woodland Hills, Prezzo Restaurant in Sherman Oaks, and Barefoot in Hollywood.

Guererro built a loyal following when he cooked at Alice’s Restaurant in Malibu and later when he ran his own place, Duet, in Glendale. If his next project does take him all the way to Santa Monica, he will be missed.

“I don’t want to say anything bad about Signature Grill,” Guerrero says, “but once we opened, I didn’t think I was going to fit in very long. I do a lot of seafood . . . and if I do go to Santa Monica, we’ll do that and have a sushi bar too.”

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, Signature Grill is under the direction of Chef Eli Bernard Tordjman. It is at 14755 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, (818) 788-5200. Villa Piacere is at 22160 Ventura Blvd. in Woodland Hills, (818) 704-1185. Prezzo is at 13625 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, (818) 905-8400.

* Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at jhovey@gte.net.