The Only Game in Town

Whenever anyone asks me what’s the best dish I’ve ever eaten, I have to stop and think. I’ve been lucky enough to have tasted everything from exotic street food to extraordinary menus by celebrated chefs to superb meals cooked by brilliant home cooks. I remember a dish of ovoli mushrooms and potatoes made during the few days that these marvelously subtle mushrooms come into season in northern Italy, or Tuscan bread grilled over embers, rubbed with garlic and dunked in the green-gold of new olive oil, or baby lamb roasted over an open fire in a Spanish wine cellar that dates back to Roman times. I recall my mother’s summer Sunday supper: plate-sized shortcakes smothered with a basket of strawberries per person and mounds of softly whipped cream. And a magical dinner with two friends at Joel Robuchon’s Paris restaurant just before the Michelin three-star chef retired.

So what then would I want as a last meal? That’s a tough one, but I think it would have to be wild birds, because feathered game goes so beautifully with the wines I love to drink--Burgundies, Barolos and Barbaresos, Rh0ne reds.

Also, I appreciate that game has a season. Come late fall, it feels particularly celebratory to go out with friends specifically to feast on game. A number of L.A. restaurants offer one or two such dishes during the season, but only a few have an entire page or special menu devoted to game. Here are my notes from a recent Los Angeles game itinerary. Keep in mind that the season may end by New Year’s.

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First stop is Patina in Los Angeles. The French California restaurant has a coterie of fans that looks forward to Joachim Splichal’s game menu each fall. After last year, when a number of the dishes had sold out by the time we arrived, I got smart and called ahead to reserve a few items, just in case. The couple joining us that evening telephones the restaurant with a different request: Can they bring their 6-month-old? No problem, comes the answer. There’s a corner booth with room for the baby carrier. From such a formal, often frosty restaurant, this is a pleasant surprise. (In fact, the baby doesn’t make a peep all evening.)

In keeping with the game plan, I start with a delicious lentil soup laced with applewood-smoked bacon and round slices of dense wild hare loin. The dish is unbalanced: not enough lentils and too much hare. The garnish of black truffle with virtually no aroma or flavor doesn’t help. I love the idea of ballotine of rabbit, with its liver served on a skinny crouton, but I wish the rabbit wasn’t so bland. Even a little salt would help.

Splichal flies game in from Scotland. The grouse, a small, beaky bird that the Scottish like to hang until it turns green, is suitably tender, with a marvelous musky flavor. It comes with meaty porcini mushrooms and a golden potato galette. Grey leg partridge is braised with ribbons of Savoy cabbage and black trumpet mushrooms and is very mild in flavor. The prettiest plate is the venison loin with a slice of roasted Kuri squash and a sharp blue-violet sauce of Oregon huckleberries. As a special, the kitchen has Bresse pigeon. This bird, with its delicately nuanced flavor, is presented with mousseron mushrooms, though it isn’t as rare as it could be. In all, however, it’s a pleasurable evening.

A few days later, at Spago Beverly Hills, chef Lee Hefter also has Scottish game and is offering a game menu. (Reservations are required and the whole table must have the game menu. The other option is to just order the one or two game specialties on the regular menu.) It is a spectacular meal conceived by a chef who’s passionate about game. Not only does he give the game extra aging, Hefter also considers how best to cook each type and tailors wonderful sauces to complement them. Because game has so little fat, it can easily dry out, so it needs to be cooked slowly and basted frequently.

The menu: an astonishing pumpkin soup perked up with a tart cranberry and quince chutney and scattered with toasted walnuts and shreds of wild duck confit that really taste wild. A gently roasted breast of pheasant is paired with silky French cepes; the leg goes into the makings of a ragout studded with intensely earthy root vegetables and the daintiest thyme-scented gnocchi. Next comes red partridge braised with Savoy cabbage; here the leg has been turned into a confit (salted and slowly cooked in fat). The natural juices are spooned out of a silver saucepan, adding to the beauty of the entire composition, which includes flat little cippolini onions, black trumpet mushrooms and some of those wily huckleberries, which look as if they’re going to be sweet, but aren’t. How can he top this, I ask myself?

Shifting flavor palettes, Hefter next sends out woodcock that’s cooked mole style and has accents of chile and chocolate in the intricate sauce. He accompanies it with tartly sweet braised red cabbage and a spoonful of chestnut and parsnip purees. It’s extraordinary how these tastes play off one another. Saddle of hare holds its own, with tender raviolini filled with celery root and apple forming a minor chord with braised leeks, chanterelles and grace notes of pomegranate seeds.

He doesn’t let up a bit with the finale. Caramelized venison loin has a complex gaminess and is laid out with an array of other tastes: glazed endive, pungent turnips, sweet dates and buttered Brussels sprout leaves. A miniature “shepherd’s pie” of venison and yams caps things off. What a feast!

I never need an excuse to go to Saddle Peak Lodge. Just breathe the air and look at all the stars high in the Santa Monica Mountains. It’s always hard to get a reservation at this rustic stone and timber hunting lodge, and, in fact, this is the first time I’ve ever been given a table in the impressive main dining room. A fire roars in the stone fireplace and candlelight glints off the bordello paintings of fleshy nymphs. Overhead, stuffed deer and moose heads stare down at us disconcertingly.

Game is the specialty here year round, and when we open the menus, we find an entire page of game dishes. (Alex Scrimgeour took over as executive chef last fall.) Except for an elk Rossini, the recipes are mostly straightforward and hearty, less exotic than Scottish game.

I order a mille-feuille of wild mushrooms after the waiter warns me away from the buffalo tenderloin carpaccio. It’s a mix of oyster and other wild mushrooms in fragile puff pastry--a perfect dish for an older Chardonnay.

Pass up the trendy ostrich for something more classic, such as the tender mesquite-grilled venison chops with steamed asparagus--and splurge on a good bottle of Cabernet. I like the brace (that’s two) of quail wrapped in bacon and roasted whole with a savory sage and onion stuffing. And the pan-seared medallions of Texas antelope loin are juicy and seductive. The light meat is especially good with the chef’s huckleberry sauce.

There’s also a daily game plate, which usually features three types of game. The lodge, however, is such a romantic place that the atmosphere tends to overshadow the food. In fact, the kitchen is aiming more to please a faithful clientele than to set off any culinary fireworks. Yet I always have a wonderful time here.

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THE FACTS

Patina, 5955 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 467-1108. Game dishes, $36 to $48.

Spago Beverly Hills, 176 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills; (310) 385-0880. Game dishes, $24 to $30; game tasting menu, $110 per person.

Saddle Peak Lodge, 419 Cold Canyon Road, Calabasas; (818) 222-3888. Game dishes, $28 to $40.