KAZUTO KNOWS FOOD : Former Chinois Chef Kazuto Matsusaka Finally Decided He Had Other Fish to Fry

August, 1983: Wolfgang Puck and Richard Krause are downtown, poking around a seafood market, looking for fish to serve in the restaurant Puck is about to open in Santa Monica. The two talk about catfish and ginger and black beans. They look at some swordfish. (“If they grew those the right size,� Puck says with a sigh, “we could serve them whole.�) And then they spot a beautiful silvery little fish that is unfamiliar. “Kazuto will know what it is,� says Krause, who will be head chef at Chinois on Main when it opens. “Let’s buy it.�

When Krause shows up with the fish, his sous chef Kazuto Matsusaka nods knowingly. Matsusaka picks up a knife and, with swift, sure strokes, filets the flesh. “Kazuto,� says Krause reverently, “knows everything about fish.�

November, 1985: Chinois is a big hit, but Krause has gone to New York to open a restaurant and Matsusaka is head chef. Matsusaka, who came from Japan to work at L’Ermitage and Ma Maison (“and Michael’s for a little while, but I didn’t like it�), looks incredibly elegant in the restaurant’s open kitchen. Customers love to sit at the counter, watching as he wields his knife with the ease of a sushi master. More important, the food at Chinois finally starts to come into focus.

October, 1989: Chinois is going strong and people are asking, “When is Kazuto going to open his own restaurant?�

October, 1990: “I really need to talk to Wolfgang,� Matsusaka is starting to say. “I think it may be time to think about opening my own restaurant.�

May 31, 1993: Kazuto Matsusaka, 41, opens his own restaurant.

He names it Zenzero, which is Italian for ginger, but the originally planned Asian-Italian mix doesn’t work out. Kazuto drops the idea but keeps the name. And he locates his restaurant only a mile from Chinois on Main, on the site of what was once Fennel. And it is, almost instantly, the restaurant where everybody who is anybody in Los Angeles is eager to be seen.

“I don’t take reservations at 7:30 or 8,� says the woman who answers the phone. She sounds, almost from the first, harassed and irritable. Then, as if catching herself, she adds, “It’s a very small restaurant; you’ll see when you come in.� It is, almost, an apology.

Even though this restaurant is bigger than Fennel (Matsusaka has broken through the wall into what was once a Peugeot dealership), it is still quite small. People now stand where the cars once did, nursing drinks and waiting hopefully for tables. The restaurant itself is beyond a wall made of beautifully cracked glass; another wall of glass sets off the patio. The effect of all this glass is to give the restaurant an ephemeral feeling; it seems as if it might all blow away were the wind to change.

The room is so light, so airy, so uncluttered that Matsusaka must be making a statement. Chinois is dark and busy, filled with statues and flowers and colors and stuff. Whatever Zenzero is, it is certainly not Chinois.

And yet, the restaurant has its own pretensions. “Have you eaten our food?� your server will query, no matter how many times you’ve been here before. Should even one person at the table answer in the negative, you’re in for a lecture. This changes with each server, but in essence goes something like this: “Kazuto is the chef here. He is a famous chef, and he has his own idea about service. He wants you to forget your old ways of eating and to experience something new. Dishes will be brought out one by one and the food will be put in the middle of the table so everybody can experience the joy of tasting each dish.�

In layman’s words, food is served family-style. In the chef’s words (actually, in the words of Wolfgang Puck just before he opened Chinois): “It is so much easier than in a Continental restaurant, where you have to wait for everybody’s order to come out before serving.�

The food, like the room, will invariably be compared to Chinois. And, like the room, it is less flashy, less daring and less endearing. Zenzero’s food is cleaner, more severe, less rich--more Japanese than the food at Chinois. Matsusaka is at his best when the food is pared down. His fish tartare is a terrific dish--wonderfully rich tuna chopped and mixed with bits of shiso, some wasabi, some soy--served on rounds of cucumber. It relies on the quality of the fish.

There is a salad made of fried calamari, reminiscent of one once served at Chinois. What you notice here is the lightness of the frying, the crunch of squid rings against the crisp of slivered vegetables. This is a salad informed by the best tempura, and it is wonderful.

Vodka-cured salmon, which owes very little to Japan, is equally wonderful, the salmon served with a warm potato salad and studded with fresh pearls of salmon roe. And a salad of sauteed mushrooms and watercress is infused with the fresh intensity of the mushrooms.

But when Zenzero’s food gets complicated, it sometimes gets lost. Sirloin steak is made into a salad: big pieces of thin steak, hard to pick up with chopsticks and inexplicably tossed with baby lettuces, dried cherries, fava beans and olive oil. The elements never quite seem as if they belong on the same plate. Stir-fried chicken--a variation on the minced squab of Chinese restaurant fame--is just too sweet. You make your own little packages, wrapping bits of chicken and julienned vegetables in radicchio, along with pale strips that look like cucumber but are really honeydew melon. Throw in sugary fried peanuts, and you end up with something that Matsusaka must have thought his customers would like.

The entrees, like the appetizers, are best when they are simple. Chinese air-dried duck is spectacular here, the skin as hard and shiny as glass, the flesh moist and tender. On the side is a tart plum chutney that cuts through the richness of the meat.

Whole fried fish is good, too. Matsusaka takes a pedestrian dish usually made with catfish and improves it by using sweeter, subtler, less forceful fish, such as New Zealand snapper, and frying it very, very well. Salmon is good, too, simply grilled and served with mushrooms and a ponzu sauce of soy, rice wine vinegar, sugar and lemon that tempers the fat in the fish.

But the fancier dishes lose their edge: Grilled skirt steak, an Asian take on fajitas, comes with a “grilled vegetable chutney� and doughy Chinese flat bread. Roasted lamb loin is served with a too-sweet curry sauce. And while the grilled squab and steamed lobster--a sort of Asian surf ‘n’ turf--is nice, its potato tart seems like an afterthought.

Desserts come with another lecture: “Resident chef Tony D’Onofrio,� you will be told, “worked at Citrus.� Perhaps, but these desserts are delicious in a way that owes little to Michel Richard. I haven’t had one that wasn’t delicious, but I particularly recommend the raspberry brown-butter tart served with green-tea ice cream, which looks like a giddy sunset melted onto a plate. It is silly and seductive, and after the crisp severity of the best of Zenzero’s dishes, the perfect ending.

Kazuto still knows fish. Now he knows dessert, too.

Zenzero, 1535 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica; (310) 451-4455. Open nightly for dinner . Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $50-$85.