Bowl Games

It might have been the chocolate-stuffed and dipped fig that elevated the experience from picnicking to fine dining.

When you’re ushering in the Los Angeles outdoor concert picnic season, there’s no sense in eating ordinary morsels. I sought a source that could match the moment, opening night at the Hollywood Bowl, grand dame of outdoor concert venues.

I found a grand dame of catering, Peggy Dark, who had matched that darkly aromatic fig with its confectionary coating. For 20 years, the former cooking teacher has operated the academic-sounding Kitchen for Exploring Foods on a tucked-away street in western Pasadena. Salads, entrees and desserts fill a refrigerated case where customers can select their own takeout meals, a tiny part of her business. Any given weekend, Dark may have catering troupes 200-strong working at a dozen weddings, parties and fundraisers.

With her dramatic jewelry, auburn hair and sonorous voice, Dark has the upbeat but seen-it-all attitude of a Broadway veteran. This is a woman who understands the performance value of an audience’s food. A picnic at the Bowl is as much for public consumption as personal, particularly among the season-ticket holders in the coveted box seats.

It’s her talent to make the elegant look effortless. Of course, the food can’t wilt, separate, require much slicing, assembling or chilling. This year, Dark has discovered linen-lined wicker baskets with detachable lids that she sometimes secures with ribbon. The cellophane-bagged pita chips and clear plastic food containers are wrapped with ribbon and cushioned on raffia. She includes coordinated printed napkins and disposable bamboo serving utensils and plates.

Packing the best possible picnic always has been an art form, one that used to be the province of home cooks who took pride in their crispy fried chicken and tender biscuits. That tradition is slowly eroding as chefs such as Wolfgang Puck, Jean Francois Meteigner of La Cachette and Joachim Splichal of the Patina Group have entered the bowl games. With the Patina Group now running the Hollywood Bowl’s food concessions, the much-improved fare has persuaded concertgoers to trade the picnic basket for the on-site market’s takeout containers. You can pay $14 for grilled salmon and $3.75 for iced tea and head home baggage-free.

But where’s the sense of occasion in that?

After all, the term “bowl basket” has become a kind of shorthand for a gourmet picnic at outdoor events. When Dark’s clients order a bowl basket, they might be headed to any number of performances at parks, pavilions and piers. Her Kitchen wizards can create a knockout picnic package for about $30 a person, which is considerably cheaper than the price of a box seat.

Unlike the lush, pastoral picnic grounds that are adjacent to the stages at the Ravinia and Tanglewood music festivals, the Hollywood Bowl’s picnic areas are located among the concrete tangle of freeway ramps, parking lots, moving sidewalks and escalators. Is it any wonder that some flustered patrons just flop down on the asphalt outside the men’s room?

Dining well at the Bowl requires strategy. Our only hope of getting in and out quickly with the food still presentable and palatable was to strap the Kitchen’s wicker basket to the BMW--my dining partner’s R 1150 GS sport touring motorcycle. With the orange, fennel and caper salad and the fava bean hummus with basil oil carefully packed in the saddlebags, we roared across town, the pretty little basket perched on the rear rail.

Although we parked in a primo spot mere steps from the Bowl entrance, we still didn’t beat the crowd to the picnic tables. We settled for a damp, grassy slope, created a table with the wicker lid, and opened the 2001 Chateau La Fleur de Plince Pomerol, a grand vin de Bordeaux.

I may have been sitting in a rut, but my food wasn’t. While other diners pried open uninspired tubs from the grocery deli counter, I had the contents of the Wicker Wonder. The Mediterranean orzo salad had a delicious mix of sweet and chewy roasted yellow, red and green tomatoes, lemon zest, basil chiffonade, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, kalamata olives and a Meyer lemon vinaigrette. The chicken breast slices, dressed in lemon, artichoke and caper sauce, tasted bright and savory, yet didn’t clash with the Bordeaux.

When we reached our seats, we shared the apricot bars (chunky, dense fruit surrounded by buttery oatmeal crumbs), savored that divine chocolate-covered fig and looked forward to a long season of concert dining.

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The Kitchen for Exploring Foods, 1434 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena; (626) 793-7218.