The Romance of Dining by a Runway : Whither the Kiwi?

DC 3 is a trend-watcher’s dream. There is the decor that pays homage to the booth-filled grills of the ‘30s, with plenty of harsh lines and futurist twists from the late ‘80s. But there is more. Everywhere the potential hipster gazes there are clues on how to dress (carefully casual), how to snack (a $35-shot of Nonnino grappa with a side of blinis and caviar), how to chat (loudly when crushed at the bar; in witty murmurs when seated in a runway-side booth), how to make an entrance (through a spaceship-style door that makes the kind of air lock whoosh noise we learned to recognize on episodes of “Star Trek”) and, of course, how to eat.

It’s a primer on hip. And for better or worse, copycat restaurants are sure to mimic DC 3’s food style. What will they serve? Look at what is hot at DC 3: Chops and lamb shanks and steak tartare; a hearty fish soup and an elegant fish soup; three different kinds of smoked salmon; six types of caviar; potatoes made eight different ways. And look especially at what’s not: There are no baby carrots, no beurre blanc , no raspberry vinaigrette, and, most telling of all, no kiwi.

The plight of the kiwi has become a symbol of the evolution of restaurant eating from California toy food to what some are calling “real” American cuisine. As the first wave of new American chefs has matured, they’ve calmed down. And they don’t need the kiwi.

“We were eating kiwi,” said chef Mark Peel, “and I got to thinking, that poor little fruit!”

Peel, a former chef at Michael’s, Spago, New York’s Maxwell Plum and soon to open his own Campanile on La Brea Avenue, doesn’t devote what anyone would call a significant amount of time to defending the kiwi; it’s just that once you get him started, well . . .

“It’s perfectly inoffensive and yet it’s become a lightning rod for this storm of controversy,” he said.

The controversy in question is the foodie backlash, the rejection of all things cute and trendy on the plate. And, for a time, the kiwi was the cutest and trendiest of them all. “It’s the fruit-vegetable of ‘A Star Is Born,’ ” said Peel.

When the kiwi first debuted on the French nouvelle /California scene, its career looked bright. It had undergone a Hollywood-style name change (in its pre-stardom days--it made a few appearances at Trader Vics in the ‘60s--it was known as Chinese gooseberry), it was exotic and foreign-looking, and it had this ugly duckling/swan sort of quality. Just as a dye job, fancy gowns and a George Hurrell-style studio photographer could transform a plain-looking, wanna-be starlet into a glamour queen, a talented chef could bring out the fetching jewel-green inner beauty of the hairy, homely kiwi. Give it a supporting cast of darling little carrots and itsy-bitsy pieces of meat on the drama-packed stage setting of a huge Villeroy & Boch plate, and you have the makings of a culinary star.

But even as the kiwi enjoyed its new-found fame there were signs of trouble. No one objected, in principle, to kiwi tarts or kiwi as garnish (yuppie parsley), but when chefs caught up in the exuberance of the California nouvelle revolution started putting kiwi on top of meat . . . well, it was the beginning of the end.

Even Peel, who now advocates responsible use of the kiwi, says he was a witness to kiwi abuse. “When I was working at Michael’s with Jonathan Waxman I saw him make a kiwi sauce with lamb filets . . . it was, uh, interesting.”

(Waxman was unavailable for comment at presstime.)

“The kiwi is an excellent meat tenderizer,” claimed Ken Young, executive director of the Kiwi Fruit Growers of California. But when asked what he really thinks of kiwi and meat together he hesitated, though just for a moment. “It’s, uh, great . . . it’s got a kind of tangy taste,” he said and then quickly changed the subject. “Have you ever had kiwi-apple pie? It’s outstanding.”

The consensus among chefs surveyed on the kiwi question seems to be that kiwi sauce with meat is a bad idea. “I’ve done some things that I’ve been embarrassed by,” said La Toque chef Ken Frank, “raw scallops with raspberries, for instance. But I’ve never gone too far with kiwi. Let me get this straight, though, I am not wild about kiwi . . . but there’s nothing wrong with it. They’re actually pretty damn good. But veal with kiwi, sole with kiwi, pasta with kiwi . . . I mean, I’ll do a menu with all truffles, but kiwi? It doesn’t work.”

Just ask Jeremiah Tower, celebrity-chef spokesmodel for Dewar’s Scotch. Right on the pages of Esquire or the New Yorker, in glossy black and white, just above the item Last Book Read (“Bread and Circuses”), he lists his hobby as “running the Society to Stamp Out Kiwis--the fruit, not the bird.” And, we hope, not the people (New Zealanders are fond of calling themselves kiwis.)

“It’s like starfruit, totally useless,” Tower (a.k.a. Kiwi Enemy No. 1) said over the phone from his restaurant Stars in San Francisco, “To me, the kiwi perfectly represents the misunderstanding of California cuisine. People who didn’t initiate that movement, and never understood it, latched on to the kiwi and started the whole wave of new food as just chic ingredients. Kiwi was the first one, followed by balsamic vinegar, sundried tomatoes and everything else. When these things become such cliches you have to stop using them.”

Tower wasn’t the first anti-kiwi chef. The late James Beard was the actual originator of the Society to Stamp Out Kiwis--”I just took up where he left off,” Tower said.

“James didn’t like it because it was so, well, faddish,” said food writer Marion Cunningham, who was a close friend and assistant of Beard’s. “It was one of those things that preceded baby everything and it’d become such a rage, you know. He was offended by the kind of food overkill that the kiwi produced in people.”

Now that the fad is anti-fad, is there no hope for the kiwi?

“In and of themselves, they’re probably all right,” Tower admitted. “I suppose that in time, they can come back.”

Some think they already have.

“I had it at lunch the other day,” said Cunningham, “and it was wonderful. The kiwi has taken on its rightful place--it’s good in tarts and in fruit salads and just by itself . . . It’s been rehabilitated.”