The question on everyone’s mind was: Will the food that was so incredibly cutting-edge in the ‘80s still hold its own 30 years late
It’s been 19 years since chef John Sedlar’s storied 1980s Manhattan Beach restaurant shut its doors. But 19 years has not been long enough to cleanse the lingering spice of Saint Estèphe from the palates of the locals — or anyone else who dined there. There is even a Facebook group called “I remember Saint Estèphe Restaurant in Manhattan Beach.” And not six months ago, Saint Estèphe was referenced in a Zagat Buzz article as the last restaurant to dazzle the South Bay before the influx of high-end dining the community has seen in the past year.
Nor has Sedlar forgotten the South Bay and his adventure as a 20-something-year-old restaurateur whose first establishment built him an early reputation peppered with adjectives such as groundbreaking, cutting-edge, and transformative. It’s been three decades now since he first fused native American and Latin flavors with French nouvelle cuisine to create what would later be referred to as Modern Southwest Cuisine.
In commemoration, Sedlar is doing it all again.
At his lauded downtown Los Angeles restaurant Rivera, Sedlar is hosting the Saint Estèphe Retrospective Celebration, a month long nod to his not-so-humble beginnings as Cuisinier Restaurateur. The affair kicked off yesterday with a private dinner for old friends, staff and patrons. It is carrying on throughout the rest of the month with photo presentations, archival menus, and of course, the food of the legendary Saint Estèphe.
At a preview dinner, the question on everyone’s mind was: Will the food that was so incredibly cutting-edge in the ‘80s still hold its own 30 years later?
We began with bubbles and caviar. A 2007 Gruet Blanc de Blanc from Sedlar’s home state (and major culinary influence) of New Mexico was paired with the Mosaique Kachina des Caviars Américains, a mosaic of the southwestern Native American Kachina spirit doll formed out of three kinds of American caviars and chopped egg, dressed with “endive feathers” and served with toast points.
This dish set the tone for the meal — and for any meal in one of Sedlar’s restaurants. Sedlar’s cuisine is also a visual art.
“We eat with our eyes and minds as much as with our mouths,” reads the restaurant philosophy on the Rivera website. This is one of Sedlar’s defining truisms, and it applies to Saint Estèphe as much as to his other four establishments over the years. While the presentation of each dish fought to surpass the one before, the food was — for the most part — not to be outdone by its own appearance.
A tiny, soft blue corn tortilla topped with foie gras and tequila jelly was so bold and provocatively grown-up in its supple texture and earthy, alcohol-spiked flavor that I almost blushed imagining what diners must have thought eating it 30 years ago.
The “tamale” of salmon mousse, steamed in a corn husk with ground nixtamal and served with a cilantro crème sauce, was like a savory dessert, so light it seemed on the fork, and so soft yet incredibly rich it was in the mouth.
Each of the eight courses — all paired with French wines after the initial New Mexico sparkling — had something to say, whether it was the early incarnations of Sedlar’s subtle play with spice and acid (such as the jalapeño vinaigrette sauce surrounding the roasted chicken breast), or a butter-cream decadence that was one of the only giveaways of the menus age (like the Roquefort cream sauce on the scallop “nachos”).
Of course in some dishes, the presentation was the main attraction. The Huevos Rancheros arrived as two hollowed brown eggshells filled with a simple, chèvre-laced scramble, each with several long, curved, and perfectly unsuitable for scooping blue corn chips sticking out of the top like a wild, mystical, southwestern crown. Occasionally, the presentation took away from the food. Old, classic nouvelle touches like the life-size rose made of carved carrot made the roast pork loin feel dated, and an assorted fruit dessert called the “Neon Tumbleweed” looked startlingly like a tee-shirt I wore as a kid in the ‘80s.
Today, the Saint Estèphe food feels, by Sedlar’s own admission, a bit “heavy-handed.” While he resisted making changes to his original recipes, he did allow himself to ease up on the butter and cream that was the focal point of so much 1980s fine dining. Even so, the cactus pear granita with sweet vermouth palate-cleanser, between the fish and the meat courses, was the only really clean tasting flavor of the evening.
“Diners are flavor-seekers now,” Sedlar reflected while discussing the use of cream post-meal. “They are more interested in the subtle.”
Still, while the recipes themselves could perhaps use a little freshening, there’s no doubt that the food of Saint Estèphe would cause a stir even now, particularly here in the South Bay where nouvelle cuisine is not all that accessible.
“I have a lot of diners who come to Rivera from Palos Verdes Estates and Manhattan Beach. There is a lot of interesting food in the South Bay now, but back then, there was just us and Chez Melange,” Sedlar said with a smile, “And you could get a really great burger at a place called Fat Face Fenner’s.” (He was happy to hear that the FFF Bar was alive and well.) “I think people would love [this style of food] in the South Bay today.”
I agree. While Sedlar has no plans to return to our breezy beach community, Saint Estèphe’s cult status is as in tact now as it was then, and not even his 15-year hiatus from this restaurant world has dampened Sedlar’s repute as a gastronomic visionary in the South Bay and beyond.
“It was the first time I had hominy, the first time I had pasilla chiles, the first time I had sopapilla,” said Chez Melange’s Michael Franks of Saint Estèphe. “[It was] very cutting-edge at the time — small portions, unique flavors. John was always a charming chef. It’s very unusual to have a chef so personable. He was the first in the South Bay to get national recognition. John deserves his success.”
While the “birthplace of Modern Southwest Cuisine” might not mean much to the general public, consider that Saint Estèphe was the birthplace of the now ubiquitous blue corn chip.
“It is hard to overestimate the importance of St. Estèphe, nor of Sedlar’s vital role in the history of New American cooking,” wrote LA Weekly food critic Jonathon Gold upon Rivera’s opening in 2009.
“One sight, one scent, one taste, one bite and it can evoke whole worlds of memory and transmit experiences and truths that words cannot convey,” reads Rivera’s philosophy. In true John Sedlar form, this Saint Estèphe Retrospective Celebration is about more than blast-from-the-past cuisine; it is about celebrating memories and transmitting experiences across time; it is about recognizing where we came from so that we can continue go forward to find the next cutting-edge.
