A NIGHT IN RUSTIC FRANCE

Roasting meat perfumes the air, which is filled with the sound of laughter. People sitting around big tables covered with enormous platters of food clink glasses while waiters in long white aprons dash about carrying baskets overflowing with beautiful vegetables. There’s a fire with plump chickens turning lazily on a spit, and the glowing embers spread a golden light across the room.

It is like a dream, a rustic fantasy from the past. A minute ago you were parking in the classiest garage in town. Then you went up a thoroughly modern escalator--and somehow ended up here, in the warmth of a village bachanal. How did this happen?

Now one of those waiters is standing at the table holding a terrine filled with a pate that smells impossibly delicious. He slices it off in generous slabs and the robust aroma of the herb-flecked, garlic-filled loaf comes wafting across the table. Now he is offering you thick slices of peasant bread, toasted so the grill has etched dark slashes across it, and dotting the table with ceramic bowls filled with cornichons. It all tastes more like some fantasy of the French countryside than anything you have ever eaten in America.

By the time the waiter reappears with a basket of vegetables that looks like it belongs in some 18th-Century still life, you no longer question anything at all. You’re in France now, in some small country village, and you’re terribly afraid that you will do something to make this wonderful scene vanish. So you pour some of the cool crisp Provencal Rose and rummage through this beautiful basket. Red, purple and golden peppers nestle against great bunches of radishes and shiny little sheaves of tiny green and white scallions. Whole hearts of celery curl their leaves around cute little carrots as they nestle against bright red tomatoes. There are lettuces in all colors and round white mushrooms cut into fanciful shapes. There are even a few hard-boiled eggs sprinkled here and there.

The waiter is back with more of that good grilled bread, and wooden bowls filled with a mixture of fruity green olive oil and chopped herbs. He plunks still more bowls, these filled with a soft white cheese, onto the table. You make yourself an impromptu salad with these spectacular vegetables, pulling them out of the basket and dipping them into the oil or the cheese. The chickens are turning golden on their spit and the fire is glowing even brighter and it all feels like a perfect springtime picnic.

And now the main part of the meal arrives--still more rustic abundance. You have a choice of beef or lamb or fish or chicken. It is all simply and perfectly cooked, the tasty meat grilled and sliced into thick hunks, the chicken with its crisp skin and moist flesh served in substantial pieces. The meat is served family style on long wooden boards, along with potatoes that have been buried in the ashes of the fire until their skins turn dark and dusky. Inside the meat of the roasted potatoes is white and fluffy, soft against the crackle of the blackened skins.

This is wonderful food, the sort of fare that depends only upon really good ingredients. There is no trickery here, nothing to disguise the simple purity of the flavors. It all tastes as clean and fine as fresh water from a running brook.

Dessert is more homely stuff, abundantly served. Big bowls of chocolate mousse are brought to the table, along with airy puffs of floating islands in a gooey caramel sauce and great red wheels of strawberry tarts. It is exactly this sort of food that makes you feel that the French eat better than anybody else in the world.

And what is this food doing here in the Rodeo Collection? Do you really want to ask? When you suddenly find yourself transported from the most pretentious mall in America into a dream of a small French village restaurant, questions seem dangerous. Reality, you think, is likely to make it all disappear.

It may seem like magic, but every Thursday night a small corner of the Rodeo Collection will keep turning into a little bit of France.

The French country dinner is served every Thursday night at Pastel, 421 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. (213) 274-9775. The price of the prix fixe meal, food only, is $22.50 per person.