Have Toque, Will Travel

By Mimi Sheraton

"First I like to do things I like, and second, I like to make money, which I like." So says Albert Roux, who with Brother Michel owns several celebrated restaurants, including Le Gavroche in London and the Waterside Inn in nearby Bray. Both boast the Guide Michelin's top rating, three stars. The Rouxs are among a number of prestigious European chefs and restaurateurs opening branches in the U.S. Currently the brothers provide inspiration, advice and some financial backing to Michael's Waterside Inn, a superb and comfortably inviting restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif. The inn, which opened in 1984 and is now beginning to flourish, appeals to such notables as Actor-Producer Michael Douglas and TV Chef Julia Child, a part-time Santa Barbara resident who rates the cuisine "truly excellent."

Albert and Michel hope the inn will be the first of many outposts in this country. To that end they are seeking out and training gifted young American chefs, like Michael Hutchings, the controlling partner in their Santa Barbara pilot venture. Some of the menu offerings are Roux inventions -- the cloudlike cheese souffle adrift in a cream and Gruyere sauce and the succulent beef tournedos in robust red-wine sauce with an earthy hotchpotch of mushrooms. Equally delectable are Hutchings' own creations -- tender abalone in a beurre- blanc sauce with caviar, and squab mellowed in a shallot-scented Cabernet sauce.

Cooking and prospering in America seem to be the wave of the present among many leading French and Italian chefs and restaurant owners. Their influx has been most apparent in New York City, where at least six have opened shop in the past year. One of the most successful offshoots is Le Bernardin, a copy of the Parisian two-star fish restaurant, located in a comfortable if somewhat stuffy setting in the new Equitable Center. Le Bernardin is run by the brother-and-sister team of Gilbert (the chef) and Maguy (the hostess) Le Coze, owners of the Paris original. Their Manhattan Bernardin is extravagantly expensive (dinner for two with wine can easily cost $150), offering generally good but disappointingly unvaried seafood (often cooked unappetizingly rare) and perfunctory service. Such shortcomings have not discouraged a host of devotees that includes several influential food critics. Among Le Coze's better dishes is the poached halibut with a warm vinaigrette dressing. Less appealing is monkfish with cabbage and bacon, which muffles the fish's own fresh flavor. So far, Gilbert has tended the fires in New York, leaving the Paris kitchen to his chef of several years, but Maguy commutes. "We know that to run a restaurant of this level, one of us has to be in New York and one has to be in Paris," she says.

On Fifth Avenue, amid posh hotels and shops, is a roseate version of Venice's Harry's Bar, named Harry Cipriani after Owner Arrigo (Harry) Cipriani because the title Harry's Bar is already in use in New York. Cipriani shuttles between Manhattan and Venice, dishing up unremarkable but popular food in both cities. "Business couldn't be better," he reports, noting that his New York offshoot is frequented for lunch by "lady shoppers." Perhaps they are attracted to his wanly handsome son Giuseppe, 21, the manager, who was rated by On the Avenue, a tony monthly tabloid, as one of New York's ten sexiest men. Whatever the reason, there are more than enough takers for ravioli selling at $17 for half a dozen and carpaccio, slim portions of raw beef with thin mayonnaise, which, though prettily presented, hardly seems worth $24.

Also new on the Manhattan scene is Maxim's, the legendary fin-de-siecle set piece on Paris' Rue Royale, now owned by Pierre Cardin. In the New York outpost, the semi-nouvelle French cuisine has been more memorable for its price ($65 for prix-fixe dinner) than for its excellence. The cream of mussel soup known as billi-bi, a Maxim's invention, is decently turned out, but stale-tasting duck pate and the overly complicated, overcooked saddle of lamb with basil cream could not even be considered near misses. The gaudy interior, a bad copy of the Paris setting, includes such embarrassingly corny touches as violinists serenading customers as they climb stairs to the dining room. Nevertheless, Manhattan's Maxim's is merely a model; Cardin is planning a series of casual eateries called L'Omnibus de Maxim's, after the cafe L'Omnibus already operating in New York, and a chain of Maxim's Suite Hotels. The first is soon to open in Palm Springs. Says Monty Zullo, general manager of Maxim's American operations: "All along the line, plans involve the same trading on the name, the same logo."

In addition to the owners who are working both sides of the Atlantic, there are chefs who have either abandoned their highly rated restaurants or plan to commute between the New World and the Old. Among the more strongly committed is the versatile Gerard Pangaud, formerly the owner of a two-star Paris restaurant that bore his name. He has thrown in his lot with Joseph Baum, the inventive New York impresario who created The Four Seasons and Windows on the World. Baum now runs a promising, quasi-postmodern creation called Aurora, where eclectic new French-American cooking prevails. Among the better menu choices are the roasted pigeon with sweet garlic, lime-broiled guinea fowl and a pungent lemon hazelnut torte. Enthusiastic over what he calls le reve americain (the American dream), Pangaud says, "I love the open-mindedness of this country. You can try much more than in Europe with food and with your life. Besides, there are too many expensive restaurants in Paris for the number of customers."

That open-mindedness, along with the differences between European and American ingredients, has inspired most of these newly arrived chefs to re- create their recipes. For the most part, they use domestic products and only occasionally find that they require heftier seasoning.

Like Le Bernardin, Palio is also in the Equitable Center, and its kitchen is the province of the one-star Italian chef Andrea Hellrigl (a.k.a. Andrea da Merano, an honorary nom de cuisine he enjoys), who owns the Villa Mozart, a trimly polished Jugendstil-designed hotel in Merano. He stirs the pasta pots for Operator Tony May, who masterminds Palio's spacious and vaguely Japanese- looking dining rooms. So far Hellrigl's esoteric offerings have been uneven. They may be as institutionally dull as his lackluster codfish with potatoes or the watery mushroom terrine or as wonderfully executed as the ricotta dumplings with truffle butter or a risotto with sweet red peppers. "It is a challenge to give Americans a taste of my style," Hellrigl says. "Some definitely do not like the food," admits May, "but they may not understand it."

New Yorkers can expect even more on their plates if the plans of other European restaurateurs pan out. Alain Senderens, formerly of the three-star Archestrate and now of Lucas-Carton in Paris, expects to open on a midtown site. In addition to the fashionable Milan favorite Da Bice, other popular Italian restaurants, such as the posh El Toula chain and the sublime San Domenico in Imola, near Bologna, are seeking locations. Not all agree that New York is the only place to be. Michael Hutchings explains why he and the Roux brothers chose Santa Barbara. "This is a cosmopolitan town and is a getaway for the very rich. People demand a high quality of life, and so it's perfect for a first-quality restaurant." Lower overhead and less competition are also factors. Andre Surmain, the founder of New York's Lutece but now known for his Relais a Mougins in the south of France, opened a branch last winter in Palm Beach, Fla. He is encouraged enough to have what he calls "other tricks up my toque."

One of the earliest and most enduring successes has been Jean-Louis Palladin. In 1979, after ending his partnership in a two-star restaurant in Condom, France, he went to Washington to cook at the Watergate Hotel, in an intimate setting named for him, Jean-Louis. He is a master at game and sweetbread dishes, and his soups and sauces based on purees of sweet peppers are seductively silken. Such enticing food enthralled an audience that included President Reagan, who celebrated his 70th birthday at Jean-Louis and thanked the chef for immigrating.

Palladin does not think success here comes easily. "I work harder and have no family life. My one day off I sleep to noon with exhaustion. In France % there are the same hours but not the same pressures. In America you have to be on edge every day. When you are good, they will love you. But make one mistake and they will kill you." Agrees Surmain: "Americans squeeze you like a lemon, and when there is no more juice left, they just drop you." He advises also that it is important to have a good command of English, to appear well on TV talk shows.

Such warnings are best appreciated by those who have come, cooked and failed. Among them is Parisian Chef-Owner Guy Savoy, who left his restaurant in Greenwich, Conn., only a year after it opened. And Roger Verge, who maintains a three-star rating in his exquisite Provence celebrity haunt, Moulin de Mougins, flunked out after 15 months in San Francisco. He claims insufficient support from backers. He is now content to work with Paul Bocuse and Gaston LeNotre as consultants to the French restaurants in Florida's Epcot Center.

Such failures are unlikely to dampen the enthusiasms of other chefs and operators who hunger for a piece of the American pie. But there is no guarantee of success. Lured by the illustrious reputations of famous European cooks and owners, Americans will go and taste for themselves. It remains to be seen whether they will decide that Le Bernardin offers seafood dishes better than those prepared at the well-entrenched great French restaurants of New York, or that either Palio's or Cipriani's risotto surpasses those gentled in the kitchens of at least half a dozen other top-flight Italian restaurants. Then too, chefs who maintain European interests may find that without their constant presence, Michelin stars will vanish, along with a disaffected clientele. It is a risk most of these ambitious adventurers seem perfectly willing to take.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Santa Barbara and Elizabeth Rudulph/ New York