Pure Romance

Hotel restaurants are usually dull--suitable for business meetings or guests too incurious to venture out. There are exceptions, of course. Lespinasse at the St. Regis Hotel in New York immediately comes to mind, or Masa’s in the Hotel Vintage Court in San Francisco. These are not just great hotel restaurants but great restaurants, period.

Most hotel dining rooms serve up safe, predictable food with just enough bells and whistles to justify the price. Despite the handsome dining rooms and waiter-heavy staff, the experience usually is more form than content. Hotel chefs, like cruise ship cooks, tend to be competent and well-trained, but spend so long in the system that they are drained of any originality and passion.

Yet every once in a while someone who’s cooking his heart out comes up through the system. The customers may not care. There may not be that many customers at all. All that matters is cooking and cooking well. And that’s how it is with Craig Strong at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington.

Strong has been chef at The Grill for just nine months and, judging by the relatively empty dining room, it seems not many people have had the itch to revisit the Ritz lately. Each meal I’ve had has been so well-crafted and so delicious that it seems a shame this extremely capable young chef doesn’t have a full house every night.

The Grill (not to be confused with The Grill on the Alley in Beverly Hills) is a beautiful setting, with its burnished wood walls inset with antique framed ship models, wall sconces and ladylike banquettes. But the real treasure here is the outdoor terrace just large enough for a handful of tables. Lit by old-fashioned carriage lanterns and framed by a marble balustrade, it looks out on the moonlit garden with the glitter of the city lights at the horizon. Hushed and quiet, it’s as romantic as you could wish.

And the food, well, that’s also pure romance. The menu carries a whiff of the Mediterranean with its touches of France and Spain, but it’s far from the same dishes seen all over town. On a first visit, I’m entranced by the sauteed monkfish with calamari and white beans with romesco sauce. What a terrific combination, especially since Strong cooks the beans so that they drink up every bit of the mingled juices of fish and squid. Romesco--that distinctive Catalan sauce of almonds and garlic pounded together with dried and fresh sweet red peppers, tomatoes and olive oil--is the perfect complement. Strong’s eggplant and tomato terrine, served chilled, has a seductive depth of flavor. It’s pure Provence, and it’s paired with a dollop of brandade that isn’t just a rustic, garlicky salt cod puree. This achieves a wonderful balance and texture.

While everyone at my table is smiling at this serendipitous discovery (who expected this kind of cooking at the Ritz?), I sneak a bite of my neighbor’s seared foie gras: heaven. It’s a gorgeous piece of duck liver, its sweet, fatty richness set off by a sprinkling of fleur de sel, the mineral-laden sea salt from Brittany. The plate is garnished with a streak of vanilla sauce. Its exotic taste and the refreshing salad of thinly sliced Asian pears deliver a one-two-three punch. Another night I swoon over the terrine of rabbit and foie gras, a rough-hewn mosaic of unctuous liver set with blocks of pale rabbit meat. Finally, somebody who knows how to make a proper pate and isn’t afraid to season it.

We’re feeling a little giddy now. Gorgeous night, romantic terrace, wonderful food and waiters with impeccable timing unobtrusively taking good care of us. At The Grill, you can order either the three-course menu, which has lots of choices, or take the chef’s five-course tasting menu for $10 more. If you don’t feel like eating that much and one or more of the dishes from the tasting menu catches your eye, you can choose any of those as well, so it’s a flexible system.

When I see crayfish with fideus in a bouillabaisse sauce one night, I commandeer that as part of my three-course menu. You don’t see fideos here very often, and this is the best I’ve had outside Barcelona. Small wonder, for it turns out the chef worked at the Ritz Carlton’s Hotel Arts in Barcelona for a couple of years. It’s basically a thin pasta cooked as if it were risotto--toasted and then stirred with small increments of highly flavored consomme, in this case seafood, until the noodles are al dente. The tender, bite-sized crayfish are fabulous. Strong also makes one of the best duck breasts I’ve had recently. Ribboned with fat, it really tastes like duck, not just some neutral red meat.

This is hotel food? I keep thinking. It has too much soul.

I have one friend who orders the same thing everywhere we go, making him something of an expert on pasta with seafood. Here he put his dibs on the handmade fettuccine with seared sea scallops, something that’s usually fairly dull. Not this version. The fettuccine is nicely firm, the scallops as sweet as they come, and to pull it all together, Strong tosses it lightly in a subtle orange curry sauce. Even something as standard as lamb loin and chop is exceptional for the quality of the meat, and for the sensible yet inventive side dishes of intense sweet pepper ragout and olive-oil-crushed potatoes strewn with fava beans.

It’s not over yet. A gentlemanly waiter mentions that the chef makes his own pastries, too, which brings back memories of Michel Richard, that pastry chef turned restaurateur and chef who, unfortunately for Angelenos, moved to Washington, D.C., a few years ago. Rice-paper napoleon is a ravishing stack of thin, crackling sheaves of pastry with wild strawberries and cream, and a little coconut sorbet on the side. The toasted meringue is like eating little bites of cloud. And a warm apricot and almond cake could have come from a French grandmother’s kitchen.

By the end of the evening, I’m wondering why we didn’t think to reserve rooms and spend the night. If breakfast is anything like this meal, I’d stay for days. What a profound surprise to find such an ardent, hands-on young chef in a hotel kitchen in Pasadena. It goes to show that there is always hope.

The Grill

Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa

1401 S. Oak Knoll Ave.

Pasadena

(626) 585-6240

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Rating: ***

AMBIENCE: Old World elegance, with ladylike banquettes and a romantic outdoor terrace.

SERVICE: Extremely courteous and professional, from waiters who are waiters.

BEST DISHES: Tomato and eggplant terrine, Santa Barbara prawns with gazpacho, sauteed foie gras, seared scallops with fettuccine and asparagus, monkfish and calamari with romesco sauce, lamb loin and chop, rice-paper napoleon, toasted meringue. Three-course menu, $58. Five-course tasting menu, $68; $88 with wines. Corkage, $15.

WINE PICKS: 1999 Maximin Grunhauser Herrenberg Riesling Kabinett, Mosel Saar Ruwer, Germany; 1996 Fernandez Pesquera, Ribera del Duero, Spain.

FACTS: Dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Complimentary valet parking.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.