Tuesday, November 30, 7:00 pm
Members $100, guests $125

Imagine if, alla Capra, the clock were turned back and we were allowed a glimpse of a world without Michael’s. If Michael McCarty had not founded his visionary restaurant in Santa Monica, California farmers might never have planted mâche, arugula, or fraises des bois. The careers and cuisines of Ken Frank, Katsuo Matsusaka, Mark Peel, Jonathan Waxman, and Roy Yamaguchi would all be irrevocably changed. Don’t fret. Thanks to our guardian angels, we live in this reality, with not one Michael’s, but two.

Although he is one of the founders of California cuisine, McCarty is a native of Briarcliff Manor, New York. After graduating from high school, McCarty moved to Paris, where he received degrees from L’Ecole Hotelière de Paris, Le Cordon Bleu, and L’Académie du Vin. He returned to the United States for further studies, earning a B.A. in the Business and Art of Gastronomy from the University of Colorado. Inspired by his time in France, McCarty opened his namesake restaurant with the dream of celebrating California’s native bounty, a goal he handily accomplished. As Max Jacobson put it for Westways magazine, McCarty and other innovative chefs “stirred up a cooking revolution.” When she re-reviewed Michael’s Santa Monica for Gourmet, Caroline Bates recalled her first meal at the restaurant “as if it were only yesterday”: the warm sweetbread salad with raspberry vinegar reduction, the buttery scallops with roe and cassis sauce, and the soon-to-be classic “les five sorbets.” “Everyone at lunch that day sensed they were witnessing the birth of a revolution,” Bates wrote. “And we were.” McCarty took the revolution to New York in 1989, and the major players came running in equal numbers. Offering the same inspired simplicity and seasonality, Michael’s New York became (and remains) the spot for power lunches.

McCarty will be preparing dinner with his right-hand men, Nadav Bashan of Michael’s Santa Monica and Robert Ribant of Michael’s New York. Bashan moved with his family from Israel to the United States as a youth. After graduating with honors from the Cordon Bleu program at the Pasadena Culinary Institute of the Arts, Bashan interned at the Lobster under Allyson Thurber, where he worked for two years. His next post was at Michael’s. After two years, he was promoted to chef de cuisine. Ribant is a native of Detroit who worked at the renowned Dearborn Inn after graduating from cooking school, eventually transferring to the Downtown Marriott in Manhattan. Before joining Michael’s New York in 1999, Ribant worked around the Big Apple at The River Café, Hudson River Club, and Firebird.