THE GARDENS TOUR
Gardens, in the Four Seasons Hotel, 300 S. Doheny Drive, Los Angeles, (213) 273-2222. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $50-$100.
It is the morning after a dinner at Gardens. I am standing in my kitchen listening to the congressional hearings and picking at a piece of fish left over from last night’s dinner. Cold fish is not something I normally hold in high esteem, but I am trying to figure out what spices have been used in the dish. I taste saffron and garlic, the high appealing note of lemon peel, a faint green touch of coriander. As I stand there I recognize the flavors of an astonishingly complex array of spices, and before I know what I have done I have finished the entire piece of fish. Looking at that empty silver foil, it occurs to me that this juicy black cod is as fine a piece of fish as I have ever eaten.
I have never had a more difficult time reviewing a restaurant. My first meal at Gardens was good, but not great. My second meal was a thrill, among the best I have ever eaten. I couldn’t wait for the next meal--and then I wished I had. It was sheer disaster. The fourth was merely mediocre. And then came the fifth, another brilliant tour de force. How can you explain this?
A GOOD OPENING ACT
APRIL 21
The brand-new restaurant was packed with people who had watched the raising of the deluxe Four Seasons Hotel and read about the culinary exploits of Lydia Shire, one of the most respected chefs in the country. Those who knew her reputation for inventive cuisine peered about a bit incredulously and shook their heads. This totally tasteful room is a bastion of conservatism, from the lemon-colored silk walls covered with old-time art to the gold-rimmed plates.
But the menu made the surroundings disappear. Everything sounded unusual and delicious, from savory bread pudding with sweet garlic and crisp lamb sausage as an appetizer to lemon duck with fried sorrel leaves as an entree. And although a great deal of what we tasted was wonderful, in some cases the execution left a little to be desired.
My favorite dish was young goat pastry with dandelion greens and skordalia. This appetizer turned out to be an enormous plate of food, twice the size of the dishes many restaurants call entrees. (At $10 it was a real bargain.) A tender goat chop was sitting in a bit of brioche, surrounded by a salad of dandelion greens and a mound of garlicky pureed potatoes. I liked another appetizer, too, charred tuna with whole scampi and artichoke hearts on a bed of olive pasta.
That lemon duck was crisp and pungent, the flesh almost buttery in its tenderness. Whole leaves of sorrel that had been battered and fried were the final innovative touch to an unusual dish.
Other entrees left me cold. Caviar as a main course sounded so seductive that I was crushed to discover it might as well have been called “sushi contemplating a heap of caviar.” It was served on a beautiful Chinese lacquer tray and the caviar was excellent--but sushi was not the image I had been holding in my mind. And salmon with mint, snow peas and Belon oysters seemed slightly ordinary after its flowery description.
Service was stilted; waiters fussed when you wished them elsewhere, weren’t there when you needed them. But so much of the food had been really extraordinary--and this in the restaurant’s first week--that I was eager to return.
THE MEAL OF MEALS
MAY 3
On the tape that I made as I drove home that night, I sound ridiculously rhapsodic. “Those oysters,” I hear myself saying dreamily, as a car honks behind me, “were an amazing idea. There they were, sitting on a plate half covered with ice and half covered with rock salt. Each oyster had been treated in a unique fashion: a tiny icy Olympia came topped with caviar, a Pigeon Point was hot, crisply wrapped in a tempura of vegetable strips. One came in a vinaigrette, another like a little beggar’s purse wrapped in filo pastry. And each,” my voice gets dreamy again, “was absolutely fabulous.”
There I am, driving through the night, talking about the escarole and fava bean soup: “A clear broth so the flavor of the vegetables came shining through. There were croutons with it, buttery and fine. I absolutely loved it.” I was equally taken with scallops with blood orange butter and fried vermicelli. “Dishes that sound this exotic rarely live up to their promise,” I hear myself saying. “But these all did.”
Three huge charred lamb chops were meaty and lean. They came with a fried artichoke with capers, a sort of American carciofi alla giudia. “A wonderful dish!” I cried. But my greatest praise was for the lobster. “It was perfectly grilled,” I told the tape recorder, “topped with the tomalley that had been sauteed with garlic, and served with a sort of ginger butter. I could have gone on eating it forever.” It was served with fantastic spring rolls made out of tender vegetables.
I went on so long about the wonder of this food that I was almost home before I even got to dessert. “It was a dream!” says my voice. “Rhubarb crisp, not very sweet, with perfectly flaky crust and vanilla ice cream. Something called ’24 karat gold chocolate plate’ contained a spectacular frozen chocolate mousse with Calvados poured over it; it was cold, soft, velvety all at the same time. White chocolate mousse with raspberries came wrapped in cat’s tongues. A flourless chocolate cake was dense and slightly bitter. There was also an intense chocolate terrine. At $6, this plate was a bargain.”
The service had been quiet, fast, professional. I’d liked an obscure Bordeaux I’d ordered off the wine list, an ’82 Fonplegade ($25). Listening to the tape, even now, I get hungry. “And,” I concluded as I pulled into the garage, “the price-value ratio is very good. This is far from being the most expensive restaurant in town.”
DISASTER STRIKES
MAY 11
I should have known as I stood waiting to be seated while the hostess took seemingly endless telephone reservations that the evening was not going to be a success. We waited 20 minutes for somebody to take our wine order, another 15 minutes before he told us that wine was out. The bread sticks were soggy (in fact, they almost always are, although the herbed, grilled brioche toast is addictively delicious). My guests hated the anchovy butter on the table (I myself am very fond of it). Every dish took an interminable time to come.
In really good restaurants, when the kitchen gets backed up the front takes over. The maitre d’ might come over, apologize, soothe your nerves. None of that happened; the staff simply ignored the fact that we were waiting.
And when the food came, it was downright dreary. The fried oysters were limp, as if they had sat waiting for a while. Soup was salty, foie gras overcooked. Having told my guests that they were about to eat the meal of their lives, they were incredibly dejected.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
JUNE 2
A mixed meal. One dish of the evening completely enchanted me; skate ribs, long chewy pieces of fish that connect the wings of the ray. Served in a blossom vinegar sauce they were an unexpected treat. But veal (very fine veal) came out cold, clam chowder was so salty I couldn’t eat it and the desserts were a shadow of their former selves. At lunch a few days later in the adjoining cafe I had the best salade nicoise I’ve ever eaten--along with a hamburger on a sadly stale bun. What, I wondered, was going on?
A PUZZLE SOLVED
JULY 14
Gardens had become a puzzle I could not solve. But knowing that the menu had changed with the season, I decided to go back one last time to try the new summer dishes. This time I made no promises; in fact, I told my guests nothing at all.
And so they were startled when they saw the menu. “I’ve never seen dishes like these,” said one, “they all sound fabulous. What do you suppose Sephardic boyos of spinach and shaved romano, dried tomato and ripe olive are going to be?” Then he shrugged and said he guessed he’d find out. Another ordered “a plate of 17 pope’s hats” while I tried the “charcoal grill in the style of Japan.” The fourth refused to play along; he insisted on sensible spicy field lettuces with homemade plum vinaigrette.
And he was sorry. This was not because the salad was bad; it was wonderful, the dressing powerfully flavorful without overwhelming the greens. It is just that the rest of us were stunned by the food we were eating. The pope’s hats were delicious little triangular pieces of pasta stuffed with finnan haddie and potato. Mixed among them were tender bits of squid. The charcoal grill was a real conversation stopper; the waiter actually brought a little hibachi to the table. Atop the coals were a big chunk of buttery beef, a fat slice of tender tuna, crisp-skinned salmon and a whole, sweet langoustine. These were served with a little cup of dashi, a scattering of daikon, seaweed, scallion and a few curls of buckwheat soba.
As for the boyos-- they turned out to be three huge turnovers, each filled with a different vegetable mixture. “Why haven’t I ever had these before?” I wondered.
This menu is Shire at her best--personal and exotic without being tricky. Shire draws the cuisines of the entire world into her kitchen (I counted 14 countries on the present menu), where she modifies and makes them her own. These are dishes you will find nowhere else.
When she tackles Moroccan foods (obviously a favorite), her cous cous comes out in an entirely new form. The grain itself was served in a little copper pot, topped with buttery almonds. With it was a tagine of fish--black cod and langoustines that had been gently stewed. This is entirely untraditional, but the fish was fabulous--even the next day. Shire served lamb with a Tunisian brik --a large puffy pastry envelope that covered half the plate. Most restaurants that tackle the dish use filo dough instead of the traditional warka; here the pastry is clearly homemade, and it has an entirely appealing texture. Filled with a mixture of ground lamb, mint and a whole egg, it was my favorite dish of the evening. Better even than smoky barbecued lobster, which came with the best beets I have ever eaten.
“I’m so full,” complained one friend (Shire’s portions are beyond big), “but I wouldn’t miss dessert for the world.” And dessert was another triumph. Best of all was a feuillete made of chocolate (the pastry itself a dense brown), sitting atop a tangy, bright orange sauce anchored by little balls of chicory ice cream. Having tasted this, one friend gave Gardens his ultimate accolade: “I’d come back here on my own money.”
“Even,” I asked, “knowing it might not be this good next time?”
“I’d take that chance,” he replied.
And you will have to take yours. There are still some rough edges here, and I suspect they have something to do with the fact that this has become the place for trendy functions. It seems that every wedding, every big-deal dinner (from the American Institute of Wine and Food to the Harvard/Radcliffe Club) is taking place at the Four Seasons this summer. That would put a strain on any new kitchen. The result is that Gardens isn’t always on. But when it is, there’s not a more exciting restaurant in town.
