Dishes of dreams and memories

GIVEN what I do for a living, I’m constantly besieged to name three or 10 or every last one of my favorite restaurants. Before you get that pencil, let me say the answer depends on what I feel like eating at that moment. Whether I have a hankering for huckleberry shortcake, a bowl of earthy pasta e fagioli or whole fish steamed with ginger and garlic, to name just a few of the cravings that lure me back to this or that address.

A new restaurant, whether it’s a high-profile boite two years in the making or a little dive with terrific Oaxacan food, brings out the thrill of the chase. But I’m convinced most people go back to a restaurant not so much for the drop-dead decor, or a solicitous maitre d’ or the chance to bag a celebrity sighting for the relatives back in Duluth, but to eat something so delicious its memory has stuck around for months.

I’ve noticed that whenever someone brings up their favorite restaurant, they can’t help but recite their favorite meal there in the same breath. And once that serendipitous combination is found, most people won’t stray far from the prescription. At Campanile, they have to claim the grilled prime rib before they even think about first courses or dessert. At Musso & Frank, it’s the flannel cakes or the grilled calf liver and bacon. At the Grill, the Cobb salad.

When I cast my mind back over a year’s worth of eating in Los Angeles -- and that’s at least 10 restaurant meals a week -- the taste of certain dishes is burned into my memory, as vivid and immediate as if I’d just laid down my fork moments before. The real test for me is a dish’s hold on my imagination.

For today’s Food section, we call in 10 of those recipes, so that avid cooks out there can try to duplicate the dishes at home. The choice was just short of agonizing.

A new vigor

But once we had the final list, and cooked them all in our kitchen, we realized that the dishes that resonated in memory also said a great deal about the state of the restaurant scene in Los Angeles right now. Chefs seem to be emerging from a long spell of conservatism, when it was enough to hunker over the stove and cook the same dishes night after night. Now the most interesting chefs are finding their voice again, and we’re seeing the beginning of a return to the creativity and bold innovation of the ‘80s, when L.A. restaurants were setting the tone for new cooking in America. L.A. cooking at its best is pared down, modern and surprising.

They are paying more attention to the way a dish tastes than to teasing it into a startling construction inspired by the pages of Popular Science or Architectural Digest. One of the loveliest dishes I had recently was a bowl of steamed bouchot mussels garnished simply with a halved lemon and a perfect bay leaf.

When simplicity succeeds, it has a natural grace and logic without for a minute surrendering its mystery, that one element that, like a sprinkling of fairy dust, sparks magic. It could be the thrilling sour of tamarind in an almond sauce that goes with curried cauliflower and Nantucket scallops at Spago or the blast of green peppercorns in the vinaigrette that flavors Water Grill’s big-eye tuna tartare. And at the Santa Monica newcomer Whist, roasted pineapple encrusted with crushed coriander and black peppercorn frames a gorgeous hunk of custardy foie gras, letting the rich silkiness of the foie gras shine.

This year I’m seeing a new interest in texture, which points to a new sensuality in cooking. For Red Pearl Kitchen in Huntington Beach, Shelley Register created one of my favorite desserts of the year, a gauzy smooth pot-de-creme suffused with cardamom and served in a cafe au lait bowl, the better to share. She’s one of a new generation of pastry chefs who are pushing the envelope when it comes to sweets.

Vegetables are finally getting some respect, too, as sides to order on their own -- potato gratins drenched in cream, roasted cipolline onions, parsnip purees, baby Brussels sprouts straight off the stalk. At Lucques, we found a wonderful stuffing for roast chicken, or any bird for that matter, suffused with earthy green chard.

Unadorned grace

Another good sign is a return to authenticity with truly regional Italian and French cooking. Finally, Italian chefs have realized they don’t have to dress up their cooking as French in order to be appreciated. Gino Angelini at Angelini Osteria is leading the way with pasta dishes such as his gutsy bombolotti all’ amatriciana, included here. And other chefs now have the confidence to give diners real Italian food, the kind of dishes they grew up on. On the French front, bistros such as Mimosa are venturing beyond steak frites to offer regional cooking from Alsace or Lyon or Provence.

Chefs are no longer slaves of the old restaurant system, who rarely leave the kitchen. They get out and see the world. Ciudad and Border Grill’s Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger pick up and go off to Mexico or Asia to ferret out dishes and techniques they can use in their restaurant kitchens. Lee Hefter at Spago learned to make agnolotti in Piedmont and brought back aligote (a mixture of potato and Cantal cheese) from the Michelin three-star chef Michel Bras in Laguiole.

Cooks also find inspiration here in L.A., where the smorgasbord of ethnic dining may be more diverse than any other place on Earth. Fueled by access to authentic ingredients and the bounty of local farmers markets, a rich stew of cuisines -- Oaxacan, Indian, regional Chinese, Japanese, French, Italian, Lebanese, Korean -- sparks the imagination and wafts the scents of cardamom, turmeric root, chipotle and exotic mushrooms into the most unlikely kitchens. Borders are fluid, surprises everywhere.

Here then are the year’s most memorable dishes.