"First I like to do things I like, and second, I like to make money, which I like." So says Albert Roux, who with Brother Michel owns several celebrated restaurants, including Le Gavroche in London and the Waterside Inn in nearby Bray. Both boast the Guide Michelin's top rating, three stars. The Rouxs are among a number of prestigious European chefs and restaurateurs opening branches in the U.S. Currently the brothers provide inspiration, advice and some financial backing to Michael's Waterside Inn, a superb and comfortably inviting restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif. The inn, which opened in 1984 and is now beginning to flourish, appeals to such notables as Actor-Producer Michael Douglas and TV Chef Julia Child, a part-time Santa Barbara resident who rates the cuisine "truly excellent."
Albert and Michel hope the inn will be the first of many outposts in this country. To that end they are seeking out and training gifted young American chefs, like Michael Hutchings, the controlling partner in their Santa Barbara pilot venture. Some of the menu offerings are Roux inventions -- the cloudlike cheese souffle adrift in a cream and Gruyere sauce and the succulent beef tournedos in robust red-wine sauce with an earthy hotchpotch of mushrooms. Equally delectable are Hutchings' own creations -- tender abalone in a beurre- blanc sauce with caviar, and squab mellowed in a shallot-scented Cabernet sauce.
Cooking and prospering in America seem to be the wave of the present among many leading French and Italian chefs and restaurant owners. Their influx has been most apparent in New York City, where at least six have opened shop in the past year. One of the most successful offshoots is Le Bernardin, a copy of the Parisian two-star fish restaurant, located in a comfortable if somewhat stuffy setting in the new Equitable Center. Le Bernardin is run by the brother-and-sister team of Gilbert (the chef) and Maguy (the hostess) Le Coze, owners of the Paris original. Their Manhattan Bernardin is extravagantly expensive (dinner for two with wine can easily cost $150), offering generally good but disappointingly unvaried seafood (often cooked unappetizingly rare) and perfunctory service. Such shortcomings have not discouraged a host of devotees that includes several influential food critics. Among Le Coze's better dishes is the poached halibut with a warm vinaigrette dressing. Less appealing is monkfish with cabbage and bacon, which muffles the fish's own fresh flavor. So far, Gilbert has tended the fires in New York, leaving the Paris kitchen to his chef of several years, but Maguy commutes. "We know that to run a restaurant of this level, one of us has to be in New York and one has to be in Paris," she says.