The Wow Effect

These days, the hottest story in restaurant cuisine is also the simplest: wonderful ingredients straight from the farm presented without fussiness. A plate of perfect heirloom tomatoes, for example, drizzled with aged balsamico. Or a filet of just-caught striped bass, seasoned with salt and pepper, roasted and delivered to the table with a few sprigs of watercress.

Sure, the food tastes great, especially when prepared by a skilled chef. But where is the visual drama, the kind that has the power to excite not only the diner and her party but, in some cases, every person in the room, as if Julia Roberts herself had strolled out of the kitchen?

Where is the “wow” effect?

It turns out that it’s alive and well. These aren’t the ‘80s, of course, when every other dish aimed for gravity-defying heights and, too often, function followed form.

Today’s best chefs have reined in the inner artiste, using unusual presentations to complement and offset the more standard offerings. When they do strut their stuff, it’s not just for visual effect but to improve the flavor of the food and the entire eating experience.

Take the Jiffy Pop appetizer created by Vida chef-owner Fred Eric. It arrives at the table looking very much like the familiar foil dome, except in this case, the base is a black bowl rather than the traditional flat popcorn pan.

Just a silly something to appeal to those Silverlake hipsters, right? Not so fast. “The presentation is functional,” Eric insists.

For starters, the foil keeps the contents--mussels in a Vietnamese broth--hot. Then there’s the aroma factor. When a waiter, after setting the dish on a table, uses chopsticks to poke a hole in the dome, the result, says Eric, is “a blast of smell. And a lot of eating is smelling.”

Josiah Citrin of Melisse in Santa Monica also understands the importance of smell. But this is only part of the reason all the soups he prepares are ladled at the table. “I’m bringing back the old style,” says Citrin, “a more luxurious feeling.”

All of Citrin’s soups involve a presentation within the soup. Order tomato soup, for example, and a bowl of little summer vegetables topped with a garlic flan is set before you. The soup is ladled around the flan. Similarly, pea soup is ladled into a bowl already containing a ragout of lobster with peas and morels and a curry mousse. The hot soup melts the mousse, imparting a subtle curry flavor to the whole.

“It turns soup into more of a dish,” says Citrin. “And when you charge $14 or $18 for a bowl of soup, it’s got to be nice.”

The newly reopened Patina in Los Angeles also offers table-side presentation, a new feature. “It wasn’t possible [before],” explains chef-owner Joachim Splichal, “because the tables were too close together.”

Among the items served table-side are co^te du boeuf, rotisserie chicken and whole fish, generally sea bass or turbot. All of these are wheeled from the kitchen on handsome mahogany gueridons custom-made in Italy. (This investment is a clear indicator of how enthusiastic Splichal is about the new service.)

“The old hotel restaurant in the ‘60s in the U.S. made cre^pes suzette and cherries jubilee table-side,” says Splichal. “But that all disappeared. I want to bring it back. Maybe it’s a little old-fashioned, but I think people will appreciate it.”

Splichal won’t do the carving and fileting himself. “I’d rather be in the kitchen in control of what’s going out,” he says. Besides, he adds, “If I do it for one person, I have to do it for everybody.”

Waiters trained for the task will do the honors. Splichal hopes customers will learn a little something from their handiwork and ask questions. There could be a benefit in all this time at the tables for waiters too. “The gratuity could be a little bit higher,” Splichal says.

Equally luxurious is the grilled foie gras, which Kakemoto serves on curry-flavored, deep-fried shrimp and a potato ball. It isn’t just the foie gras that makes this dish rich; it’s chef Masakazu Nonomura’s final touch, a scattering of 24-karat gold flakes.

But Nonomura doesn’t use the gold because of its glamour, or because the restaurant is in Beverly Hills. “In Japan,” he explains through an interpreter, “we believe gold makes human bodies pure. The foie gras and deep-fried ball are very heavy. The gold makes it light, makes the customer healthier.”

There’s also more to his “rising Spanish mackerel” than meets the eye. The dish is certainly dazzling: a whole fish, about 10 inches long, propped up in a way that makes it look as if it’s about to leap right off the plate.

“It expresses how fresh the fish is,” Nonomura says of this classic Japanese presentation. “The brain determines if food is good, not just the tongue.”

The meaty portion of the fish is cut sashimi style, and replaced, more or less, in its original position. When the sashimi is eaten, the carcass is whisked away and returned moments later deep-fried, as hot and crunchy as fresh potato chips.

In some cases, it’s the vessel that turns a dish into a showstopper. Cafe Del Rey in Marina del Rey makes an irresistible appetizer called kung pao Thai shellfish sausage. The crunchy garnish of roasted peanuts is delicious, but it’s the pretty (and edible) spaghetti basket cupping the bite-size sausages that makes it such fun.

Chilled seafood platters are almost always good-looking, but the fruits de mer at Eurochow in Westwood are centerfold material. Owner Michael Chow designed large, shallow acrylic bowls for the service. They’re filled with ice and topped with the usual oysters, lobster and so on. On tables lighted from within, as most here are, these transparent bowls turn luminous.

“To be a good restaurant,” says Chow, “you need some theater going on. Even if you’re not eating it [the fruits de mer], you remember it. It’s part of the theater. It creates an energy when it passes through the room.”

Lobster also gets a visual boost at L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills. Chef Joseph Antonishek serves a lobster Napoleon with artichoke mousse and a side of pickled market vegetables. The unusual part is the French press coffee pot set alongside it. Coffee with your lobster? Guess again: The plunger pot contains lobster bouillabaisse, and at the bottom is a lime wedge.

When the waiter pushes down on the press, the result, says Antonishek, is “a fresh blast of acidity.” The waiter then pours some of the bouillabaisse into the bowl along with the Napoleon. The press, with the remaining bouillabaisse, is left at the table.

Even more of a head turner is Antonishek’s “rock of lamb”--rack of lamb roasted in clay, inspired by a classic Chinese dish, beggar’s chicken. Antonishek breaks the clay coating table-side, using a small silver hammer. “It looks like one of those things you get your knees checked with,” he says.

Because the lamb is stuffed with garlic and herbs, breaking the clay releases a seductive aroma.

“The whole dining room usually stops and watches the show. If I can sell one during an early seating, then at the 8 p.m. seating, a lot of people order it. Every other table has lamb.”

Is roasting lamb in clay any better than a covered roasting pan? Antonishek says yes. “All the flavor is trapped inside. And because the heat is even, you get perfectly roasted lamb.”

For pure charm, it’s tough to beat the “rabbit surprise” at the Hotel Bel-Air. Chef Thomas Hanson sends it out to nearly all the guests at Table One, a chef’s table for parties of four to eight. It’s an 11-inch bronze rabbit decked out in a tuxedo, carrying a tray. On the tray is a dish of tuna tartare and a plate featuring a potato pancake topped with caviar. A demitasse of lobster bisque sits at the rabbit’s feet.

A smaller bronze frog gets similar treatment; it carries two potato pancakes on the tray on its head. Both the rabbit and frog, incidentally, are sold in the hotel gift shop.

Only slightly less adorable is the miniature antique iron stove that, like the rabbit, generally goes to Table One or VIPs. The stove top is usually covered with petits fours and truffles. Inside it are fresh-baked cookies.

Hanson admits the stove idea was borrowed from David Burke of New York’s Park Avenue Cafe. “He is very innovative with props,” says Hanson. “But he doesn’t do rabbits.”

You don’t need to spend a bundle to experience unusual presentations. The meatloaf sundae at the Clubhouse in Costa Mesa is definitely a spectacle. It’s a towering “sundae” of brioche layered with mashed potatoes and meatloaf, with brown gravy standing in for chocolate sauce, chives for nuts and fried pickled onions for the cherry. “We have some members [diners] who ask, ‘What dessert is that?’ ” says chef Leonard Delgado, its creator. “Even if they’ve already ordered, they say, ‘We want one for the table.’ ”

Can unusual presentations handicap a restaurant? In a way, yes. Eric, creator of the Jiffy Pop, has been celebrated for his innovative presentations, often to the exclusion of commentary about his food, which is very good. The 2000 Zagat Survey, for example, says little about flavor but plenty about visuals, including references to “vertical presentations” and “eye-candy food.”

“We use great product,” says Eric. “And I have all these great employees who work really hard. It’s depressing to me that they need to live under the umbrella that I’m this wacky guy who does unusual presentations with wacky names. I’m a little disappointed people can’t get over their narrow-mindedness.”

Fortunately, Eric’s spirits aren’t entirely dampened. “As I keep making tastier and better-looking food, people will come around and say, ‘Oh, it really was about the taste.’ And I’ll be a happy camper.”

One thing, however, won’t be changing at Vida, Eric says: “We need to give people a ‘wow’ experience.”