TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/1118570.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 120 lines

                                                                                FOOD, Page 100

CALIFORNIA

Spicy Blend Of East And West


Pacific Rim cooking is the latest gourmet buzz

BY MARTHA DUFFY


     Lunchtime in Beverly Hills. A bold, bright, high-ceilinged
room with sun streaming through the skylights and a mighty
bamboo tree thrusting toward the roof. The regulars, mostly
show-biz honchos, pour into Chaya Brasserie to talk their way
through low-cal power meals. The plates, sprouting salad greens,
look conventional at first, but in fact, the fare is novel: a
combination of the vaunted California cuisine (roughage) and
subtler accents from Asia -- tuna and salmon tartare, lemongrass,
ginger. Called Cal-Asian cuisine or Pacific Rim cookery, it is
the latest gourmet buzz.

    The idea of Pacific Rim cuisine began taking shape about
10 years ago. It can be several things, but it is never merely a
transplanted ethnic cuisine. Instead it is an unpredictable
culinary reflection of California's ethnic mix. Typically a chef
or sous-chef may be Chinese or Japanese and may have trained in
France or Italy. He or she may mix several Pacific traditions
into what could be called a pan-Asian cuisine, or perhaps add
just a few Far Eastern touches to American or French dishes.

    The best-known pioneer of Pacific Rim cooking is Wolfgang
Puck, California's reigning celebrity chef. When it comes to
dining, he maintains, Californians love novelty. "There are so
many cultures with exciting cuisines here," observes the
Austrian-born Puck. "After all, the culinary heritage of
Thailand is more interesting than Poland's. Californians are
very open. They're less likely than back East to go for pot
roast or baked scrod!" When he started up Spago in Beverly
Hills, he employed young Asians in his kitchen. In 1983 Puck
decided to look East himself -- Far East -- with Chinois on Main
in Santa Monica, now a Cal-Asian temple. His 2 1/2-year-old
Postrio in San Francisco is also a Pacific Rim hot spot.

    Other visionaries were stirring. San Francisco
restaurateur Jeremiah Tower was teaching Cal-Asian cooking with
Ken Frank, who opened La Toque in Los Angeles to show off his
ideas. At the same time, ethnic communities were growing
rapidly, especially around Los Angeles. The town of Westminster
in Orange County was becoming a vast Little Saigon, eerily
reminiscent of Vietnam two decades ago. Monterey Park is now the
modern Chinatown, where purist chefs from Hong Kong disdain any
mixed methods -- and draw their own faithful crowds.

    It was only a matter of time before the impulse to marry
East to West became irresistible. Says Barry Wine, whose
Quilted Giraffe in Manhattan is a rare East Coast Cal-Asian
spot: "You can do this only in America, where there is less
cultural baggage to lift." Nobu Matsuhisa, whose eponymous
Beverly Hills restaurant serves masterly food, observes, "Here
I use French truffles and Caspian caviar. Why not?"

    The new menus would not be nearly as popular if the food
did not appeal to Californians' health consciousness. Thai
food, in particular, is healthful. The flavors tend to be clean
and clear, the colors bright, the presentation light and
graceful.

    Cal-Asian cuisine -- as distinct from wok and stir-fry
cooking -- is still largely a dining-out rather than a domestic
phenomenon. Some culinary sophistication is called for. "You
can't just plop Asian ingredients into French food or vice
versa," says Tower. "And some Western things shouldn't be
touched; I wouldn't give up sauce bearnaise for the world."

    Still, it probably won't be long before cookbooks crop up
and more people start experimenting. Asian markets are
attracting not only their own ethnic shoppers but the whole
community as well. Tower recalls that five years ago he found
a supplier of exotic Thai and Indian commodities who every week
produced something he had never seen before. Now much of it is
at the local Safeway: fresh turmeric, several kinds of Thai
basil, gingers like galingale, and strange fruits, including the
dread durian, which tastes sublime but smells foul.

    There are entertainers and purists. Noa Noa, in Beverly
Hills, is a sort of post-Polynesian circus of a place that
features oddities like "mashed potatoes with chicken in Asian
whole-grain mustard sauce." In San Francisco, Bruce Cost runs
a superserious Chinese-style spot called Monsoon. He prods his
clientele to try the pigs' feet and the innards, and zealously
guards the freshness of his food. And when Cost says fresh fish,
he means alive almost until the fork hits it, "not a dead fish
that's been sitting around for eight hours."

    What no amount of ingenuity or international esprit can do
is create a dessert menu. The concept is alien to Asia. But in
California that is a mere detail. Tiramisu, Venice's current
contribution to international menus, is popular. Creme brulee,
the chic dessert of the '80s, gets a mild Asian make-over --
with ginger, mint, chocolate or mandarin orange added.

    Opinions vary on just how far the cuisine will spread in
the U.S. -- but it is definitely traveling westward, back along
the Rim. In fact, Jeremiah Tower is already singing the praises
of the best, most balanced French-Asian fare he has ever
sampled -- in, of all places, Adelaide, Australia. California
may have to start looking over its shoulder.