Renoir chefs work to create culinary works of art

Martin Kuz

Sunday, Feb. 6, 2000 | 9:04 a.m.

Executive chef Alessandro Stratta chats away inside a life-sized jewel box, also known as the ornate confines of Renoir. Around him, the walls quietly boast three paintings wrought by the French impressionist whose name graces the restaurant, along with five pieces produced by Renoir's students.

Stratta paints the air as he talks, making those little hand gestures that all world-class chefs make when they speak of their passion, fine food. He brings the tips of his fingers of his left hand together, then springs them open like a rose in sudden bloom.

The translation of this bit of chef sign language: Tonight, as every night, Stratta hopes to create his own works of art.

"I try to make it a magical place up here," he says, his left hand brushing across the invisible canvas of the room.

But then, with a jerk of his right thumb toward the kitchen behind him, Stratta punctuates a distinction between Renoir, the restaurant, and Renoir, the artist.

"I don't work alone. Back there, there's a tremendous machine that makes it happen," he says.

Indeed. By 3 p.m. that machine already has hummed along for two hours, and no one would mistake the Renoir kitchen for a painter's hushed workshop. The gleaming space instead echoes with the discordant din of a culinary orchestra warming up for its evening performance.

Almost no conversation passes among Stratta's kitchen staff -- six cooks, a pastry chef and a sous chef, or his second-in-command -- as cooking bowls and pans clatter and clank. Soups, sauces and stocks gurgle on the mammoth stove's 22 burners. The whiny whir of high-speed blenders rises above the persistent whuk-whuk of knives upon cutting boards.

An earnest, upbeat mood wafts through the kitchen, mingling with the piquant aromas of braised beef, butternut squash soup and Stratta's signature dish, saute of foie gras. Receiving the five-star rating gave a deserved jolt of pride to the crew, Stratta says, and he credits their furrowed-brow diligence with helping Renoir reach elite status a scant six months after opening.

Butterflies

Michael McCarthy, a 25-year-old cook who honed his cleaver-wielding skills in San Francisco restaurants, likens the tremor of pre-dinner energy to the butterflies felt on a first date.

"Before we got the rating, people came in and would say, 'Wow, what a great meal.' Now they come in expecting a great meal," McCarthy says. "So, yeah, it's a little bit of added pressure. It's kind of like that knot you get in your stomach when you're talking to a girl."

The 35-year-old Stratta, an affable sort known as Alex to his staff and most everyone else, welcomes with a smile the early strains of tonight's gourmet symphony. A man in love with his work -- "This is what I do, this is what I know, this is what I am" -- he grew up all over Europe, thanks to his father's job as a hotel manager for a number of swanky resorts across the continent.

Globe-trotting as a youth broadened Stratta's palate, and today he delights in taking a diner's tastes on a trip around the world.

A sampling of the seafood on Renoir's menu: wild turbot, a flatfish caught off the coast of France; Dover sole, plucked from the Strait of Dover, a strip of water that connects the English Channel with the North Sea; and black bass and lobsters snared off the coast of Maine. All of the seafood is pulled from the water no more than 48 hours before landing on a guest's plate.

The meat selection is similarly eclectic. Venison from New Zealand, wild pheasant from Scotland, lamb from the world-renowned Jamison Farms in Pennsylvania.

Exotic vegetables such as black truffles, a mushroom-like fungus found under the roots of oak and chestnut trees in France, and Ligurian olives from Northern Italy enhance the flavor of assorted dishes. Add to those ingredients 100-year-old balsamic vinegar, authentic ocean salt from France and other trademark Stratta touches, and the result is haute cuisine that makes a person's mouth hallucinate.

The result is also a typical dinner tab of $100 a patron, a number that varies somewhat based on wine and entree selections. Stratta figures the restaurant spends an average of $4,000 a day on food alone.

"Hence, our prices," he says, smiling. "Somebody's got to pay for it."

And somebody has to prepare it. Much of the duty falls on the six cooks who comprise the kitchen's "back line" by manning one of four stations -- meat, fish, hot appetizers and cold appetizers. Sporting regulation cook jackets, they become white blurs as the night wears on, swiveling nonstop between the stove and their designated food-prep area.

The six men -- none older than 30 -- who work the 1 p.m.-to-11 p.m. shift today share a couple of traits. Each wants to pull a Stratta -- that is, each hopes to one day run his own place. And most of them can be labeled mama's boys, at least in the respect that they first learned about cooking by hanging out in mom's kitchen.

Scott Reuse, 27, remembers his mom turning over her spatula to let him cook Swedish meatballs for the family. Tonight he occupies the cold appetizer station, whipping up everything from apple salad with arugula and fennel leaves to an upright Napoleon of ahi tuna and smoked salmon.

"It's a long way from meatballs," Reuse says with a grin.

Next to Reuse whirls Salvatore "Sal" Zappone, 25, who prepares the butternut squash soup and braised duck cannelloni, among various hot appetizers. Like the others he sports a pair of black shoes with thick, grease-resistant soles that allow him to move about without flopping around like a dog on ice.

"You gotta have the shoes," he says.

Resisting temptation

Down from Reuse and Zappone, Gerald Coleman and Tony Westfall work the fish station alongside McCarthy and David Shearman, who man the meat post. More remarkable than the food they serve up -- so tender one only needs gums, not teeth, to chew it -- is their ability to resist devouring the dishes themselves.

The 28-year-old Westfall reveals the secret of their self-restraint. "I like the food here, but you get sick of it after awhile," he says. "It's so rich, you know? I'll take a beer and a hot dog."

The clamor inside the kitchen crescendoes when, minutes after the restaurant opens for business at 6 p.m., small printers begin to spit out itemized ticket orders to each station. Complete tickets go to the one-man "front line" post occupied by Stratta, who reads aloud the orders to ensure his crew keeps them straight.

"All right, action time," Zappone says, assembling an order of mascarpone and herb risotto, a cheese-and-rice concoction.

Schmoozing VIPs

Nearly every dish Zappone and his cohorts crank out until closing time -- four-and-a-half hours away -- will pass under Stratta's nose for inspection. He defers now and again to his sous chef Steven Varga when he has to wander into the restaurant to schmooze VIPs -- tonight it's Perry Rogers, a business partner of tennis star Andre Agassi.

The rest of the time, Stratta eagle-eyes each plate of food, asking for more onions on a lamb dish, or for a tuna-and-salmon Napoleon to be re-stacked. He uses the corner of a napkin dipped in water to wipe away renegade specks of spinach sauce on a plate, and adjusts a green lentil on a wrapped veal tenderloin to sit just so.

But in a tribute to the back line's perfectionism, no dish receives an outright thumbs-down from Stratta. Shearman, 30, explains the cooks' mind-set this way: "Alex has got a great reputation. You don't want to let him down."

Stratta only raises his voice when he needs to be heard above the clang of utensils. He sometimes rests his head in his right hand, the calm eye of a storm he stirs up -- and relishes -- every night.

"The way to do this right, if you want to do it right, is to be in the kitchen," Stratta says. "You can't be sitting in your offices in Palm Beach. You need to be here."

Stratta believes as much even when a guest sends back an unusual request that clashes with his culinary tastes. A woman insists that the kitchen prepare her lobster "super spicy," so he gives the fish station the OK to load the entree full of white-hot chili paste.

"If that doesn't do it, I don't know what will," Stratta says, chuckling. "She's eating it, not me." He places the plate on a 4-foot-long tray that Alberto Macias, a 23-year-old food server, hoists head high before walking out to the dining room.

"She'll remember Alex in the morning," Macias cracks.

The wait staff provides another study in motion, flitting in and out of the kitchen without pause. The five-star rating has been great news for servers: One says the average gratuity he receives has jumped from 17 percent to about 23 percent since the Mobil Travel Guide put Renoir on the national food map. That amounts to $180 to $280 a night in tips on top of an $8 to $9 hourly wage, he says.

Derek Caliendo, 26, says Renoir servers understand that memory is the essence of good service. Remembering details -- from wine list selections to what shows play at the Mirage, from the best place to find a cigar in Las Vegas to the quickest route to the Grand Canyon -- separates a five-star wait staff from lesser counterparts.

"You never want to say, 'And you had ... the gin and tonic?' " Caliendo says. "People won't remember the good things, they'll remember that. They always remember the negative."

Elusive fifth star

Caliendo and 10 others on the Renoir staff, both cooks and servers, worked under Stratta in Scottsdale, Ariz., at Mary Elaine's, a perennial four-star restaurant. Stratta toiled at the upscale eatery from 1989 to 1998 in pursuit of that elusive fifth star, but Mary Elaine's never got there -- until this year.

"I'll admit I would've been a little disappointed if they got it and we didn't," says Stratta, who considers Arizona home because of his lengthy stint at Mary Elaine's. He adds with a laugh, "That was nine years of sweat equity there."

But time moves fast in the world of haute cuisine, and tonight is no different. Four-and-a-half hours feels only half that long, and by 10:30 p.m. the cooks are wiping down their stations to gear up for the next day's onslaught.

The tally by night's end: 88 guests served, a decent count on a weeknight. Weekend nights see as many as 140 guests drop by Renoir, a number that Stratta thinks the restaurant will approach on weeknights soon enough.

After overseeing the creation of that much delicious cuisine, Stratta finally gives in and indulges in a few bites of his own food, savoring the braised short rib of beef. Then, in a move that Pierre-Auguste Renoir almost certainly never tried with his students, Stratta slaps a few low-fives with his cooks.

"Nice job tonight," he says, smiling as he walks through the kitchen. "Let's do it again tomorrow."

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