Spa Cuisine Serves a Leaner Dining Menu : Restaurants, a Cruise Line, Cookbook and UCLA Class Offer Low-Calorie, Low-Fat Fare

David Baker is reforming his wicked eating habits. The 33-year-old mayor of Irvine is 6 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 306 pounds. “If you are what you eat,” he said, “I would be a Hostess Twinkie.”

As Baker attempts to lose weight he will find the road to health paved with good intentions now that more restaurants--and even at least one luxury liner and a UCLA Extension class--are recognizing the trend toward a leaner life style. Bowing to consumer demands and nudging from the American Heart Assn., they are offering menus and instruction in low-fat, low-cholesterol dishes, a food style that has been labeled spa cuisine after the health spas that have long featured such fare. (The Four Seasons restaurant in New York has copyrighted the term “spa cuisine” and is trying to claim it exclusively, but others continue to use it.)

Haute and Healthy

It is a healthy haute cuisine that leaves bean sprouts and tofu behind in favor of gourmet versions of poultry, fish, beef and fresh vegetables and fruits.

Light sauces and herbs are used to add flavor. Yogurt and non-fat milk are often substituted for cream, and reduced vegetable or chicken stocks take the place of highly saturated oils. Chefs are even experimenting with low-fat and low-cholesterol desserts that satisfy a craving for rich sweets. Unlike the diminutive portions of nouvelle cuisine that can leave one longing for a Big Mac, spa meals are ample as well as attractive.

But there is an element of nouvelle cuisine in spa food, which is a hybrid derived from French chef Michel Guerard’s inventive cuisine minceur (slimming cuisine), the fresh ingredients of California cuisine and the kinds of low-calorie foods served at the West’s exclusive health spas.

It used to be that eating out meant the Big Splurge: creamed soups, big steaks, vegetables drowned in sauce, baked potatoes smothered in butter and sour cream and a nice big piece of cheesecake to finish off the meal.

A growing interest in health and fitness and an increase in eating out is partly responsible for the shift to lighter meals. (The average person will eat out 3.7 times a week this year, as compared to 3.2 times last year, according to a survey done by Consumer Reports on Eating Share Trends.) Chefs and restaurateurs are finding that many spa meals are consumed by business people and those on restricted diets.

Some restaurants are going one step further and offering nothing but spa food, from dinner rolls to dessert. Restaurants like 400 North Canon in Beverly Hills, Geoffrey’s in Malibu and Carbos in Newport Beach, for instance, forbid copious amounts of salt, cream, oil and butter.

Why would a restaurant offer nothing but spa cuisine? Mark Warwick and wife Kim Hoffman, the “creative designers” of 400 North Canon, grew tired of the rich foods they faced when hectic work schedules forced them to eat out often--and late. (In addition to developing the restaurant, Warwick and Hoffman own a custom-furniture business and are pursuing acting careers.) When a client asked them to come up with a concept for his new restaurant, the two settled on gourmet spa cuisine.

“We wanted to have sauces, and make the food visually and sensually appealing,” Hoffman said. “The key to the whole thing is you don’t come away from here feeling you’ve sacrificed anything.”

Said one frequent patron, Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer Melanie Cook, 33: “I like to feel alert all the time, and I don’t like to go to lunch and have a big meal and drinks on a weekday. The days of heavy lunches and a lot of alcohol just don’t happen with people in my business.”

No Butter or Salt

Warwick, Hoffman and head chef Nicholas Klontz decided on menu items together, using little oil, no butter, no salt and just “a touch” of half and half in one recipe. Cheese is added to a few dishes. The result: dishes like a Cajun chicken sandwich with sweet and sour cucumbers, quesadilla with chicken and pineapple salsa and dinner entrees like rack of lamb with tomato and orange sauce and Mexican peppers with black beans. Desserts include homemade ice cream with no added sugar and light fruit mousse cakes. Soon the restaurant will offer calorie, carbohydrate, fat and cholesterol counts on all dishes for those who request them.

Across town at Geoffrey’s, executive chef Robert Grenner, 26, has been working on the restaurant’s new all-spa menu, here called “Malibu fare.” Low-calorie meals were offered as specials until two months ago when the change was made. Prices are high: about $20 for entrees.

Given time to develop new dishes, Grenner said he found few restrictions but discovered the challenge of creating good food without relying on cream, oil and butter.

For lunch there is grilled Hawaiian ahi (fish), for dinner there are appetizers like sauteed prawns and saffron crayfish tails, entrees of sauteed medallions of beef and grilled Norwegian salmon and angel-hair pasta. Desserts include blueberry brulee , a variation on rich creme brulee that weighs in at 180 calories, frozen cranberry orange mousse and grilled honey papaya.

Joe Rybus decided to open Carbos in Newport Beach to fill what he saw as a void between “funky health food places” and expensive restaurants that offer rich food. Carbos is short for carbohydrates, specifically complex carbohydrates (whole grains, fruits and vegetables), which the menu emphasizes. Rybus is a CPA and former restaurant manager who became a convert to high-carbohydrate diets when he stuck with one, started running, and lost 20 pounds.

“We get a lot of athletes in here, as well as senior citizens who were told to eat these foods by their doctors,” Rybus said. For nutritional information he relies on research he’s done, plus the expertise of one of the restaurant’s co-owners, a sports nutritionist.

Meals in the middle to high price range ($13 to $19 for entrees) include seafood lasagne, Cajun-style London broil (using a new kind of low-fat beef), Cajun shrimp and chicken and pizza appetizers made on potato slices instead of dough. For dessert there is chocolate mousse cake at a mere 150 calories per slice, and for those with the urge to binge, a 600-calorie cheesecake. Fridays and Saturdays there is the “Carbo loader’s” special, all-you-can-eat pasta that appeals to those competing in weekend footraces.

Peggy Griffith, a 28-year-old loan officer, said she dines there “because I can order things without sauce and the waiters won’t look at me funny. Whenever I go to a nice local restaurant and do that it offends the chef.”

Roy Yamaguchi of 385 North restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard has always believed in serving lighter foods, a result, he said, of his Asian roots. “Customers are sophisticated enough to have an idea of which dish is fatty and which is not. People have been experiencing fresh foods at restaurants for two or three years now from California cuisine. There are still some occasions when people want heavy sauces. They just don’t know any better.”

But old habits die hard. Yamaguchi is bemused when he sees customers “graze” on his Japanese-influenced California cuisine and then indulge in cognac chocolate mousse cake. “And then they ask for coffee with Sweet ‘n Low!”

Issue for Debate

Whether spa cuisine is simply a flash in the saute pan or a trend with staying power is an issue for debate.

“Spa cuisine is going to be more than a trend,” said much-celebrated Los Angeles chef Joachim Splichal, who recently left the tony Beverly Hills restaurant Max au Triangle due to “creative differences.” The Beverly Hills Spa Cuisine he served there was a 600-calorie, three-course prix-fixe menu that debuted when the restaurant did last year. Dishes included wild rice salad with asparagus and a red bell pepper dressing, steamed sausage of chicken with asparagus and crayfish with scallions, chives and shallots.

And although he is no longer with the restaurant, his faith in the future of spa cuisine remains unshaken. “In the year 2000 spa cuisine is going to be so big. Even McDonald’s is going to come up with something.”

Added Mark Warwick, “People are moving toward a preventive life style. (Spa cuisine) is not a fad.”

The trend doesn’t stop at restaurants; weight-conscious cooks can learn spa methods through a UCLA Extension class, or try out recipes from “Spa Food--Menus and Recipes From the Sonoma Mission Inn,” a glossy coffee-table book by spa and restaurant owner Edward J. Safdie.

At least one chef has his doubts about the future of spa cuisine. Ken Frank, owner and chef of La Toque, a Sunset Boulevard restaurant that serves pricey French cuisine, tried some spa dishes on the menu last August but abandoned them four months later. “People who come into this restaurant are here for the absolute best food in the city. They’ve waited so long to come, they don’t want to diet that night. A lot of people tried it once,” he added, “but when people didn’t have our sauces they felt deprived. But we’ll cook food any way people want it.”

Spa cuisine connoisseurs are finding that not all of the food is created equal; some restaurants that claim to do low-fat cooking sneak in fatty ingredients, while others prepare food that is amazingly bland.

Despite some restaurants’ shortcomings, there’s no ignoring the fact that more are offering lighter meals. Even fast-food establishments like Wendy’s and Jack-in-the-Box are selling salads along with hamburgers.

The American Heart Assn.’s program, “Dine to Your Heart’s Content,” was designed to help restaurants create dishes lower in fat and cholesterol. Restaurant owners sign a contract with the association stating they will offer at least four approved entrees on lunch and dinner menus and at least two on breakfast menus. Among the guidelines: meat, seafood and poultry cannot contain more than 15% fat; low-fat cheeses must be used and no animal fats are allowed in sauces or gravies. A heart next to a dish on the menu signifies it’s lower in fat and cholesterol.

According to Denise Rector, a nutritionist and community program specialist with the American Heart Assn., the seven-year-old program “coincided with a growing consumer interest in healthy eating. We did a survey of 1,100 people and found half of them watch their intake of fat and cholesterol when they go out to eat.”

Initially, Rector found some resistance from chefs and restaurant owners. But that has changed now that more customers are demanding food cooked without fattening ingredients. About 300 restaurants in L.A. County have signed up, and nutritionists are sent out periodically to check up on them anonymously.

Hotel restaurants and even a cruise line have also joined the program. Royal Cruise Lines offers its passengers an alternative to gorging themselves silly. One entree per meal is lower in fat and cholesterol, and a printed brochure placed in the cabin even has guidelines on surviving the midnight buffet (eat small portions, don’t go back for seconds).

All of these programs may be helpful to people like Mayor Baker, who so far has dropped 26 pounds from his frame through diet and exercise. For the many banquets he must attend he has his secretary call ahead and ask for low-fat, high-carbohydrate meals. He is also scheduling business meetings at Carbos. And except for the occasional scoop of ice cream or slab of Twinkie, he is satisfied so far with his “life changes.”

“I’m trying to eat a little smarter,” he said. “Maybe restaurants are coming around (to serving healthier meals), or maybe I’m just aware of it now,” he said, “but it seems that I’m seeing more of it.”