The Paella Perplex

       Out of the insult and infamy known as the 1964 New York World's Fair emerged a tiny contagion of Iberian elegancia inspired by the Spanish Pavilion. Dining out Spanish in Manhattan, till then a modest exercise in second-story paella and side-street arroz con polio, took on pomp. And the seeds of the alta cocina espanola scattered to nether Queens.

       There is a grace in the Spanish Pavilion that bespeaks age—as if it has been tucked into this rectangular pocket of the Ritz Towers forever. And there is a freshness that reads new—as if this ark of elegance and snap had opened only last week.

       The years have not tarnished the fresh pleasure of ceramic tile, hand-woven tapestry, wood-and-cork beaded dividers, stunning brass nailheads in square-cut Jacobean side-chairs, leather-bound volumes on the alta cocina above the maitre d's stand . . . and the most beautiful ladies' room in Manhattan. Nor has familiarity dimmed the joy in the kitchen's originality. And what imprudence: alta cocina—grand luxe, classic service—without the alta snub. A brave gesture that leaves Manhattan masochists confused. To weep with pleasure or smile in sorrow?  

       I could do without the mock fire ravage of the parchment menu and without the commercial for Iberia Airlines. And the prices are steep: a la carte entrees at dinner from $7.50, appetizers $3.25 to $4.50, though there is a $7.50 prix fixe lunch. But when the kitchen is good it can be extraordinary. Huevos rellenos cantabrica are multi-faceted jewels, three hard-cooked eggs, each stuffed with mysterious bits of seafood, each topped with a different sauce -- mayonnaise, Russian, vinaigrette. The quarter-of-an-hour soup is an intoxicating bouillabaisse remembrance, thick with all the fruit of the sea, rice, peas and pimiento, heady from saffron. For the sybaritic soup experience there is a broth studded with crisp toasted almonds and bread. Tiny cubes of veal and pork are skewered and grilled with ribbons of bacon and pimiento.

       Callos a la Madrilena -- tripe in a robust zesty stew with cuts of blood sausage and chorizo -- is dazzling and delicious, as entree or appetizer, in its earthenware casserole on a heavy rope mat. My first long-ago lunch at the Spanish Pavilion introduced langosta a la Mallorquina. With solemn theatrical flair, the captain peeled and sliced an apple, a pear and a banana, then tossed the fruit with perfect chunks of lobster in a piquant sauce ... a sublime liaison. The zarzuela de mariscos Costa Brava is another triumph of shellfish, bound in a noble lobster sauce. And there is no surrender at the finale.

       The desserts dazzle: rich, moist pine nut cake; an impeccable caramel flan; creamy natillas a la espanola dusted with cinnamon; homemade lady-fingers afloat; cream of wild hazelnuts, liquid silk with a scent and scatter of crunchy nut bits; crepes in a heavenly orange sauce. And there is real espresso and surely the most lofty listing of Spanish wines in town. The rarer reservas run as high as $26. But the best of the non-vintage Riojas are here too, from $8.

       Well yes, there are lapses. Scallops a la Gallega at a recent lunch were tough and dry. The potato-and-onion omelette at another lunch was over-done and boring. Lettuce-and-orange salad at dinner was utterly without seasoning and spirit. Our $12.50 Paternina Gran Reserva '55, though a good mouthful of wine, had almost no bouquet at all. And I would have preferred a captain a few degrees less bored.

       But where the Spanish Pavilion disappoints is where the Spanish kitchen disappoints. There is a boring sameness in flavoring…a repetition of sherry and a tendency to overdo the corn-starch, an earthbound quality to sauces the French whisk up ethereal. These flaws punctuated two very costly dinners --the first, $88.70 for four, the second, coincidentally, $88.70 for three, tip and tax included. The sauce was cloying and clinging on the clams a la marinera. Partridge in grape sauce was slightly dry and without any spark. Not even the very best sweetbreads could rescue the mollejas with pine nuts and raisins from flat ennui. Solomillo al chef was an exception: a tender, expertly sautéed round of filet topped with a slightly pasty bit of foie gras in onion ribbons atop a bed of perfect saffron rice.

       The pride of the Spanish cocina is peasant cooking. And for all its grand airs, that is what the Spanish Pavilion does best.

475 Park Avenue near 57th Street.

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       If it were not for the plague of pimiento, an attempt at gazpacho, a sea of sangria and outrageous fantasy in menu prose, Toledo might be any hotel dining room serving a blur of "Continental" fare.

       If you order Spanish prawns with sliced orange, you get "sauce greco" --American or Russian dressing. For tosta de champinones de las cuevas de Segovia, read: domestic mushrooms under a stifling sherry cream sauce. Caracoles en tazas pequenas a la Borgofia are our old friends, escargots. Pasteles de mariscos is the inevitable seafood crepe. Beyond the ubiquitous paella and a listless zarzuela there is nothing proudly Iberian about "filet of young Cape Cod," grilled sea bass, Dover sole with spinach, duck in orange sauce, beef with bernaise (sic) or cutlet of milk-fed veal, simmered though it may be "slowly in a wine del Marques d'Riscal." Even the wine list is curiously cool to the modest triumphs of Rioja.  

       Borrowing from the French is not a self-deprecation unique to this hand-some corner of the M-G-M building. The grand kitchens of Italy owe a debt to Escoffier. In Madrid last spring I ate German at the fabled Horcher's, French at the Jockey Club, pineapple aflame and caviar malossol on ice to Hawaiian chants at the Hotel Melia Castilla. When I begged for a Spanish adventure, a proud Madrileno nominated the Puerta de Moros, with its un-abashedly Francophile menu. Under a medallion in Spain's national colors inside a clay scarcophagus was a very French truffled chicken, mantled in foie gras. Still we managed to discover a few native delicacies: noodle-thin baby eels in a peppery oil, served bubbling in earthenware, and a majestic fish soup.

       But Toledo's compulsive borrowing seems foolish and a crushing contradiction to its Spanish setting and spirit. For the room is calculatedly grand: nicely murky by day, harshly shadowed by night, with crushed blue velvet, a tile map of Toledo, handsome table-ware, dark wooden grills, and space, precious throwaway space. Service is an earnest parody of elegance. First the presentation. Then each dish is delivered to the handsome rolling cart with its unlit warming stand, to be served, most likely, lukewarm, though earthenware-casseroled shellfish do emerge bubbling.

       "Aperitivos" arrive slopped slightly onto doily, and when the doilies run out, on cocktail napkins . . . still slopping, though. Whatever the chef can't do, a can opener does. Lobster salad is "canned lobster with grapefruit," our waiter confided, but he grew defensive on the question of the turtle soup. "Is it canned?"

       "We didn't catch a turtle."

        "Yes, but is it canned?"

       "Well, we went fishing but we didn't catch anything."

       "Is it—" Sheepish nod.

       At one November dinner the under-sell was acute. Poor dispirited waiter, so listless, bored and linguistically limited. "What is salsa imperial?" we asked.

        "Meat juice," he said. "If you no want sauce, I no give."

       "And langosta tropical?"

       "Lobster cocktail . . . Russian dressing."

       "And the tropical?" He shrugged. "You're sure?"

       "Well, underneath is a piece of orange." His modesty was not excessive. Langosta tropical ($4.50) was one chunk of lobster, four halves of shrimp and some dehydrated crab strings on a bed of fresh fruit and canned grapes (at the height of the fall harvest).

       High point of this evening was the devotion to ashtray-emptying. Bypassing the $9.50 prix fixe, we two composed our own fate: $52.90 a la carte (including tax and tip). Sizzling mussels ($2.25) came bathed in a thick garlicky sauce—pale green (at lunch the mussels in green sauce arrived pearl gray). Slightly tough and iodine-scented shrimp, clams and mussels in a sticky uninspired sauce on orange rice, ever-so-slightly medicinal, made a mundane zarzuela ($7.75). I'd said "yes" to "kreespy duck" and it arrived truly crisp little strings of candied duck ($7). Ensalada for two ($4) did not have the endive, artichoke or olives advertised and was slightly wilted in a characteristically oily dressing that cried for salt.

       A first-string waiter was drafted to flame our crepes ($5 for two). He performed with patience and élan, folding arid flaming six rubbery crepes in an orange sugar syrup spiked with Cointreau and brandy. Most dishes were edible…but nothing leaped the mediocrity barrier.

       The lone triumph in two earlier lunches (entrees from $3.75) was a lusty black-bean soup. Under several numbingly oppressive sauces was juicy, tender chicken or pleasant-enough cod, but as my friend Barbara Borgia observed, "I'm not sure scraping away all this guck is quite worth the effort."

66 West 55th Street.

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       The Marbella Restaurant was introduced to the world under the patronage of His Excellency the Ambassador of Spain to the United Nations as "a fresh, elegant new concept in country dining." And there it is, tucked into the not-exactly-rustic rump of the Adria Motor Inn on Northern Boulevard in the forest primeval of Bayside.

       Quixotic Orlando Rodriguez, thin, sharp-faced former maitre d'hotel of the Spanish Pavilion, thought to bring Iberian elegance and romance to outer Queens. But Marbella is a pale, not-very-grand poor relation of its glorious Park Avenue ancestor.

       Orlando cares. He churns through the room like a courtly grasshopper, gracious, apologetic…and there is much to apologize for. Neglect, confusion, anarchy among the waiters…and droningly slow service on crowded weekends. A three-hour affair with dinner one Friday might have been happier if we'd not been stifling in a cul de sac, waiting twenty minutes for Margaritas. A Wednesday dinner was more civilized.

       The a la carte menu rings familiar. The seafood-stuffed eggs are a triumphant echo of that Spanish Pavilion spectacular ($1.95). There is a less aristocratic pine nut cake ($1.50), rich and moist…and supersweet stewed dried fruit ($1.50) in a syrup faintly scented with Rioja…not as dignified as Manhattan's, but splendid. There is striped bass ($4.75), sole with banana ($4.95) or in cider ($5.10), fabada asturiana, a bean dish ($4.75), game, grills, and the Spanish seafood special-ties. The paella a la Valenciana ($11 for two) was moist and gently spicy with tender bits of veal and chicken, spicy sausage, tough hide of lobster, one clam, one mussel, one shrimp each, and dots and dashes of pimiento red, pea and bean green. Mussels in a mild whisky cream sauce ($ 1.85) were a promising prologue. Garlic-steeped breast of chicken ($4.50) was the best of the entrees tasted.

       But the shrimp in white wine sauce ($2.25) were unyielding beasts. The gazpacho ($1.10), so handsomely served with its quartet of fresh-chopped garnish, was timidly bland. Tripe as an appetizer ($1.95) had neither the character nor the flavor of the Spanish Pavilion's. Chorizo and mushrooms on toast ($2.10) in a glazed hollandaise was burned on top and cool in the middle. The flamed duckling Valenciana ($5.25) was a fat bird with goosebump flesh and the strong taste of not-properly-flamed liqueur. The zarzuela ($7)—a melange of handsome seafood—was bound in a ghastly orange glue.

       Host Rodriguez seemed reluctant to serve bacalao a la Vizcaina ($4.50). Americans don't like cod, he explained. But my friend the adventuress insisted she did. Rodriguez was equally timid about his pheasant in liver sauce. "But I love liver sauce," said Adventuress II, remembering a mind-blowing lievre a la royale -- hare stuffed with foie gras and its own ground innards -- at the Petite Auberge in Les Noves.

       Our host was right. The superb tart, herb-scented tomato sauce could not disguise the unfortunate cod's tough, abused state. And the slightly chewy pheasant was overwhelmed by the taste of stern and unrelieved liver.  

       Orlando himself performed the sangria ritual tableside ($7) at our snail's-pace dinner and chose the wines to blur the disappointment of our second dinner; a Rioja bianco fino ($6), light with a tart aftertaste, and a pleasant earthy Vina Pomal reserva especial '53 ($9), both from the Bodegas Bilbainas.

       The red was sharp at first, but it mellowed, leaving a few pleasant sips for our queso manchego ($1.25), a smoky provolone-like cheese. There was good American coffee and some pasty stuffed crepes doused with Grand Marnier and the zest of orange ($2.50).

       Perversely, in the wake of this stream of complaint, I can imagine a future for Marbella. There is the pride of Orlando Rodriguez to measure, and there is the reality of motel dining on Northern Boulevard. Marbella's flaws may not seem quite so glaring to transients, unspoiled locals and matinee lovers.

 220-33 Northern Boulevard, Bayside, Queens, 423-0100.

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       Long before the local flowering of the alta cocina espanola, there was Fornos, a casual and unpretentious oasis of Iberian cooking just west of Broadway. “Desde 1923,” the menu notes…Since 1932. Fornos is the Alvin Theater hangout, the Sardi's of upper Broadway, a more; peaceful, anonymous, Sardi's. Every Wednesday between shows, the box office treasurers meet for dinner in the back room. Out front you might see Yvonne de Carlo, Dorothy Collins, Patsy Kelly, the Company crew, Hal Prince and his partner Ruth Mitchell. Leland Hayward was a Fornos inevitable. At lunch one recent autumn noon Mary Rodgers, Eleanor Perry, Liz Smith and Leo Lerman were kept hopping and kissing, trading honeyed flattery.

       The waiters seem neither impressed nor depressed by the rites of Kultur. They are loving martyrs in the Jewish-Italian-mother tradition, scolding if you order more than you should...flatly refusing to let Leo Lerman break his diet.

       It would please the critics of applied pomp if here at Fornos we would find the best Spanish food in town at pre-elegancia prices. Alas, not. The kitchen here is fitfully uneven and the prices rival those of the uptown newcomers, a la carte with entrees at both lunch and dinner from $4, most $6 or $7.  

       Fornos' friends adore their 52nd Street stand, uncritically, 1 suspect. They will overlook canned mussels ($1.25) at the height of the best mussel season, and dry paella, an enormous portion ($6) larded generously with shellfish -- tough little shrimp, leathery lobster -- elastic bands of squid, flavor-less chicken and bits of sausage and vegetable accent. Narcissism, ambition and daring financial safaris surely obscure the moderate insult of a pedestrian flan and an over-cinnamoned natilla -- both the garish salmon color of a redi-mix.

       So the Fornos regular glories in a rich caldo gallego ($1.25), thick white-bean-and-potato soup flavored with pork, spinach or floating turnip green. They celebrate the fresh, sweet gazpacho ($1.25) and a zesty guacamole ($1.50) in its avocado shell, served with hot toasted corn chips. They marvel at edible stuffed peppers ($5.50), a rich, sweet, tender sole stuffed with a fluffy crabmeat and lobster "soufflé" ($6.50) and "the best double steak in town." A less-than-successful shell-fish casserole ($7.50) is kindly forgotten. And a bit of gray, antique pâté is ignored. Strawberries in the dregs of a bargain-bin wine do not register.

       Junk food fans will stick to Chilean chicken empanadillos ($4) and the Mexican combination ($5). Serious pilgrims in quest of the quintessential peasant food of Spain will hunt elsewhere.

 236 West 52nd Street.

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