Grubtrotters

Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer

“True Blood” co-stars and real-life romantic partners Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer lunched on the back patio of Gjelina Tuesday. I’m loathe to share that “news,” given that my favorite new neighborhood joint is crowded enough as it is.  I was enjoying a meal of Jidori chicken there with Curtis Duffy, chef at The Peninsula hotel’s Chicago’s restaurant, Avenues, which received a perfect four stars from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. He and his wine director Michael Muser are in town sampling the cuisine at restaurants such as Michael Mina’s XIV, Fraiche, Comme Ca, Sona, The Bazaar and Providence. I can’t wait to make it back to Chicago to try a meal by Duffy, who worked previously for Chicago icons Charlie Trotter And Grant Achatz of Alinea.

They shared a few interesting foodie gossip tidbits at our meal. Turns out the Wall Street Journal had been planning a story on Jidori chicken, which is sometimes called the Wagyu beef of chickens. Duffy serves Jidori chicken at Avenues, and they’re supposedly pampered and raised in such purity you can eat the chicken raw. (Not that anyone would ever test that theory.) Anyway, this has not been confirmed by my friends at the Journal, but rumor has it the paper spiked the story because the suppliers of Jidori chicken didn’t want to talk. They claimed their product is in such demand from top chefs that they really don’t want or need any more business that a publicity onslaught might bring.

Of course, anytime someone shies away from press coverage, I get a little suspicious. Are their chickens really as fresh and pure as they say?  It’s hard to know if they won’t let the media inspect their farms and processing plants. Sounds like the job for an intrepid undercover reporter. Stay tuned. — Jenny

You’ve probably heard the term, “Never trust a skinny chef.” But in LA, chefs often have to be camera ready. You never know when the Food Network might call. This city is full of beautiful chefs serving food to beautiful people, and I’ve always wondered how they manage to stay so trim amid all that temptation. Then one night while watching late-night TV, I ran across Ford’s Filling Station’s new chef, Kristi Ritchey, in an infomercial for Barry’s Boot Camp. She was touting the fact that she’d lost 100 pounds.

I decided to dig a little deeper and came up with this piece that will appear in Monday’s LA Times. The answer, of course, is working out really hard and watching what you eat — unless you’re Table 8 Chef Govind Armstrong, who is blessed with an inability to gain weight no matter what he eats. But what surprised me most is how many chefs refuse to eat their own food.

Here’s Page Moll, chef at the beachcomber Cafe in Malibu: “I’ll make you a great crème brûlée or flourless cake, but I’m not going to eat it.”

“Every dish we do we taste over and over,” says Sona and Comme Ca Chef David Myers. “You get sick of it.”

I suppose I can identify. Back in college, I had a summer job at Billy Bakers in San Pedro. Oat bran muffins were all the rage at the time. For years after leaving that job, I couldn’t eat another muffin. The thought made me cringe. In fact, the first muffins I truly have enjoyed since then were the fresh ones baked every day on a recent Wilderness Safaris trip to the Kalahari Plains Camp and the Okavanga Delta in Botswana. Enough time and distance from the saturation source, I suppose. Plus, those muffins were goooood.

So if cooking is an appetite suppressant, maybe those who want to lose weight should get a job in a kitchen. Then again, if you have a serious sweet tooth or issues with impulse control, that strategy just might backfire. Here’s Kristi Ritchey: “There were definitely times after a workout — I’m not going to lie — there were a few days when I ate cheesecake for breakfast.”

Good to know that chefs are only human. — Jenny

Is anyone else tired of tasting menus at fancy restaurants? In the past year or so, we have tried the tasting menus at some of the most critically acclaimed spots in the country, including Le Bernardin in New York (three Michelin stars), Manresa in Los Gatos (two Michelin stars) and Sona in Los Angeles (one Michelin star). The food was, for the most part, delicious, and yet, I somehow left feeling slightly unsatisfied.

At Sona, in particular, where I took Victor for his birthday, I was still hungry when I walked out the door, which is really kind of painful when you’ve dropped more than $300. The meal itself was like one big culinary tease. Each of us was given something different to taste, and, of course, we had to share. That initially sounded like a great idea because we got to try double the dishes. But each course was no more than two bites, which means we literally got a single bite of everything we tasted. Now granted, we have big appetites, but it just didn’t feel like enough food — or at least not enough of any single dish — to make me happy and justify the price.

The chef was out of town during our visit to Manresa, and again, I was underwhelmed. The meal just wasn’t that memorable. Le Bernadin was the best of the three, with some exquisite sauces that made me want to lick the plate. But I think I may skip the tasting menu in the future. They just seem to lack cohesion, and it always feels like you’re paying more for a less complete experience.