French Food

What Michel Richard wants most he can't have: a small, quiet, intimate restaurant, say 40 seats, where he could cook his most creative, personal food. There would be at most two seatings, for dinner only, and he would have a staff large enough to give each table plenty of attention and skilled enough to charm even the grouchiest customer. This, he knows, is a dream. The problem: Michel Richard cooks in Los Angeles.

Weekend mornings, I'm usually happy to stay at home reading, listening to music and generally lolling around. No rushing, all the time in the world for simple pleasures. Toast with homemade jam. Freshly brewed coffee. Or there's breakfast with a friend at Petrossian in West Hollywood, where luxury can be as simple as perfect scrambled eggs garnished with caviar. The cappuccino is well made and strong. You can ease into the morning with a Bellini or a lavender mimosa ? and also have the best bagel and smoked salmon in town.

The Scene: Many were calling Sunday night's gathering at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey the largest assemblage of noteworthy French chefs ever, with 60-plus cooking stars either dining or working in the kitchen. "Even in France if we wanted to gather so many chefs, you couldn't," said Moet & Chandon's Jean Berchon. They were there to honor Julia Child, the 80-year-old American chef, cookbook author and TV personality, for demystifying and popularizing French cuisine.

NEW MEXICO In O'Keeffe country The Wayfarers' six-day "New Mexico's Land of Enchantment" trek visits landmarks in Santa Fe, including museums, restaurants and historic homes. Then the walking tour heads outside the city to a Native American pueblo and into the canyons and high-desert expanses that inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's sensual paintings. The Sept. 12 departure will be accompanied by photojournalist Ellen Barone. Itinerary: Santa Fe to Chimayo, Abiquiu, Box Canyon and Frijoles Canyon Dates: Sept.

I commend the travelers going to Avignon [France] and camping out there ["Pinching Euros in Avignon," Letters, July 6]. But eating chez McDonald's? Is the thought of real French food that intimidating? I just don't get it. Ray Daitch Orange

Bonjour . And welcome to the sixth annual Fete Francaise de Santa Barbara. The two-day affair, held this weekend at Oak Park, will commemorate French Bastille Day, offering the expected 20,000 festival-goers a Parisian-esque experience--complete with a lofty Eiffel Tower adorning the sycamore-studded setting. Fine foods galore here. Plus a schedule rich with live entertainment and activities for the whole family.

Striving to focus on its core health-care businesses after a year of financial missteps, drug wholesaler McKesson HBOC Inc. on Tuesday agreed to sell its Pasadena-based Sparkletts water division to French food giant Groupe Danone for $1.1 billion in cash. For Danone, buying McKesson Water Products Co. will make the French company the second-largest distributor in the U.S. market for home- and office-delivered bottled water.

Once upon a time, Jean-Pierre Peiny was the chef at the Valley's hottest French restaurant, La Serre ("The Greenhouse"). His new place has a clever name: From la greenhouse, he's gone to L.A. Farm. There's a point to this. L.A. Farm tries for a less hothouse-like style (this is a restaurant where you can get corned beef and cabbage cooked by a French chef)--and does so rather obviously.

"What's French food?" asked the young woman intently. What's French food! How could I tell her? Twenty or even 15 years ago, French food might have been a battery of techniques and a repertoire of classic dishes . But it was far more: a unique window on food as an art form, almost a privileged state of being. Americans went starry-eyed over French wine and passed around actual French cheese like a sacrament. For restaurants, being French was something to aspire to.

Dear SOS, My husband and I have breakfast nearly every weekend at La Dijonaise in Culver City. He never orders anything except the croque-madame. It's that good! How fun it'd be to be able to make it for him myself! Sarah Alexander Los Angeles Dear Sarah: La Dijonaise's take on this classic French comfort food sandwiches rich béchamel sauce and ham between two slices of pullman bread, then tops it with cheese, which is melted to gooey perfection. Top the sandwich with a fried egg (this is what distinguishes the "madame" from the "monsieur")

REVERING la bonne cuisine as they do, many French are still fighting the good fight to hold the line against le fast food. But long gone are the days when the mention of a cheeseburger could earn you a Gallic sneer and protesters drove tractors into a McDonald's; these days, burgers are being served in upscale Paris restaurants. And now, fast food from a Michelin three-star chef?

So it turns out that French women do get fat. French men also. But most troubling to a country that prides itself on an extraordinary approach to life and eating, French children are getting pudgier too. The problem is nowhere near as bad as it is in the United States, where 65% of the population has serious weight problems, or in parts of southern Europe such as Spain and Portugal, where the vaunted Mediterranean diet hasn't helped the one-third of the children who are more than just plump.

THESE days, L.A. is a tough place to be if you're a food-loving Francophile. Oh, sure, there's a creperie every fourth freeway exit and Disneyland-style French food at Morels at the Grove. And, yes, if you're Bill or Melinda Gates, you can buy terrific, well-tended French cheeses at any number of fromageries. Well, maybe not any number. Maybe three. But go out looking for charcuterie, and it's just salumi, salumi, salumi as far as the eye can see. Jambon de Bayonne?

Let's track the French fry's arrival in America. That grease trail, according to food encyclopedias, leads back to Thomas Jefferson, who reportedly snacked on thinly sliced deep-fried potatoes while in the White House in the early 1800s. And we all know what foreign country he'd been traipsing around in. But prove to me the French fry is even French. If my people, the Belgians, didn't invent fries, they certainly took raw potatoes, sliced them up and made deep-fried masterpieces.

La vie est belle en Californie. Seven years ago, Gilena and Gary Simons honeymooned for a month in a charming cottage in the tiny village of St. Antonin du Var, 30 minutes north of St. Tropez. Surrounded by pine woods and vineyards set amid low rolling hills and the chirping of cigales, they fell in love again--this time with the languorous rhythms of Provence. "Our days were very lazy," recalled Gilena, 36.

Although it covers the food world widely, Saveur magazine has never made a secret of its Francophilia. The name, after all, is not Sabor, Sapore or even Feng Wei. That affection seems almost quaint today, as French food has been badly smeared by the pretensions of less-than-gifted cooks, but Saveur is also dedicated to the notion of real food, cooking with cultural roots--what it would probably call "le cuisine profonde."

Thursday Elegant Thanksgiving Basics: Learn to make the turkey, stuffing, gravy and extras like pumpkin risotto in this prep-for-Thanksgiving class. 10:30 a.m. Let's Get Cookin', 4643 Lakeview Canyon Road, Westlake Village. (818) 991-3940. $60. Champagne Dinner: Rose Champagnes are featured in this three-course dinner and reception. The main course is sauteed veal medallions in a foie gras ragout. 7 p.m. The Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, 9641 Sunset Blvd., Beverly Hills.

Thursday is Bastille Day -- or le 14 Juillet, as it's known in France. For me, that's cause to think about French food. And to bemoan the fact that my husband and son and I won't be going to France this summer as usual to visit my in-laws, who are obsessed with the stuff. It's tough for me to get it into my zucchini that we don't have enough sorrel to go this year. Our rear ends aren't exactly surrounded by noodles. Zucchini? Sorrel? Noodles? Well, that's how French people talk.

Free gourmet food and wine in Paris? Mais oui. But be prepared to stand in line for it. The Wine & Fooding Tour 2004, organized by the movement known as Le Fooding, is sponsoring several free events at Paris restaurants this year that offer wine tastings, with matching nibbles cooked up by young chefs. The events have attracted hundreds, with lines stretching around the block. "Wine tasting can be boring and pompous," said Julia Sammut, a member of the Fooding Bureau, which organizes the events.