Specials of the day

Alicia Robinson

Being a four-diamond restaurant isn’t about having a vast kitchen

staffed by dozens of cooks or a quaint hideaway with a menu as long

as your arm.

The secret is dedicated employees with the freedom to be creative

about food and the willingness to work long hours to serve customers

as well as possible.

Four eateries in Newport Beach demonstrated those ingredients and

won AAA’s prestigious four-diamond rating for 2005. The winners

included two restaurants, Aubergine and the Ritz Restaurant & Garden,

and two hotel dining spots, the First Cabin at the Balboa Bay Club &

Resort and the Pavilion at the Four Seasons. They were chosen from

among more than 2,000 hotels and restaurants.

A quick reward

When chef Josef Lageder starts his day at the First Cabin around 8

a.m., some kitchen employees have already been there for two hours to

prepare breakfast. Lageder’s first job is to make the rounds of each

freezer and cabinet to see what foodstuffs will be needed for the

day. The special changes daily -- it’s whatever he can get freshest.

Now that Lageder has been with the resort for almost two years,

his staff of 42 cooks knows what he wants so he can let them be

creative and trust their creations. That leaves him busy with about a

million other things -- taking phone calls about canceled banquets,

making sure the just-arrived lobsters are still alive, and arranging

the day’s special on a plate so the servers can see what they’re

selling.

“I have to almost be [the] control center before lunch here

because there are so many changes,” Lageder said. “It can get fairly

hectic.”

The kitchen is enormous, with several long counters for food

preparation and lines of gas burners for cooking. It needs to be big

because on a busy weekend, between the First Cabin and banquet and

catering orders, the kitchen may produce food for as many as 2,000

people.

Creamy lobster bisque and crab cakes are among the First Cabin’s

specialties, but the menu also includes linguini with meat sauce and

beef tartare.

Getting the four-diamond rating is a big deal for the First Cabin

because it’s only been open a year and a half.

“Usually you don’t get it in the first year,” Bay Club President

Henry Schielein said. “That was very exciting.”

Close to success

The kitchen of Aubergine begins bustling for dinner around 2 p.m.

Somewhat the opposite of the First Cabin, which has a bright and airy

dining room that overlooks the bay, Aubergine is an intimate space

with a rustic stone floor, dark wood cabinetry and a tiny, four-seat

bar tucked on one side.

In October, the Cannery Village restaurant celebrated its 10th

anniversary as well as receiving its fourth consecutive four-diamond

rating.

The staff is small -- four cooks, a pastry chef and the executive

chef -- but that’s sufficient to feed the 60 to 80 diners in a

typical weekend crowd.

“It’s like your family back here,” said Oliver Pearce, who is in

charge of appetizers at Aubergine. “You hang out with these people

more than you hang out with anyone else.”

Ideally it will be a close-knit family, because the kitchen at

Aubergine is a tight space. At one end is a nook where the dishwasher

scrubs and cleans, and at the other end pastry chef Maren Henderson

has a work station that’s about four feet by three feet.

To create the menu, executive chef Josef Centeno said he’ll start

with ingredients he likes and things that are in season and “just

kind of let them talk to me from there.”

He’s worked in New York and San Francisco and his cooking has

Japanese and Spanish influences, but Centeno said he tried to avoid

being categorized.

“There’s so many ingredients all over the world that people don’t

get exposed to or get a chance to experience,” he said.

Aubergine’s menu is long and employs a diverse collection of foods

such as parsnips, huckleberries and sweetbreads. Guests can choose

entrees such as eastern spotted skatewing or fluke roasted on the

bone, or they can order the tasting menu, a nine-course extravaganza

including several fish courses, soup and meat.

Stepped-up service

To an observer, a crowded kitchen just before a meal can look

chaotic, but at a great restaurant there’s a pattern.

“They’re all doing different things and they know exactly what to

do,” Lageder said. “Somehow it all comes together.”

Things have been coming together for years at the Ritz Restaurant

& Garden, the longest-running winner in this year’s group with 12

consecutive four-diamond rating. The Ritz’s atmosphere and food have

drawn many of the same customers for the 22 years since it opened,

assistant manager Sandy Gold said.

“You can never get bored, there’s so many items on the menu,” she

said. “We have a lot of people that come here three, four times a

week to have dinner.”

Quality food is essential, but exceptional service is also a key

to winning awards at the Newport Center spot.

“We really care about our customer, we know their little habits,

we know the way they want their drink, we know the way they want

their meat cooked,” said Olivier Doolaege, manager of the Pavilion

restaurant at the Four Seasons, an 11-time four-diamond winner. “It’s

just a matter of taking care of them from A to Z.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.