CCALIFORNIA STYLE

Freida Pinto

Ingénue and World’s Most

Beautiful Globe-Trotter

ICY DIAMONDS, KILLER STILETTOS, COCKTAIL CLASSICS,METALLIC CLUTCHES

GILT COMPLEXInside Tony Duquette and Hutton Wilkinson’s Bejeweled Universe

WATCH OUT The Season’s Most Opulent Timepieces

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DESERT ESCAPE

Transforming a Lautner Pad into a Hip New Hotel

written and edited by alison clare steingold photographed by mike gardner

NOVEMbEr 2011 C 85

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or a working expression of California’s modern homestead, visit Helene Henderson’s Malibu idyll: one pig, two dogs, two goats, 23 chickens, 10 raised beds, 50 fruit trees, 300

raspberry bushes, 400 grapevines and some peacocks. Add a beehive for raw honey, Viognier from down the way, zesty Bloody Marys courtesy of a brand-new local mixer and golden olive oil from a nearby Point Dume grove. Good fences make good >>

Backyard RestaurantMalibu’s popular new dining destination: a gourmet farm on Point Dume

FAt your service: Malibu High alums Jackson Winner, Alec “Big Al” Houge, Jack Platner and Charles Joseph Keossian.

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from left ragnar and Hillary rosinkranz. malibu mary shooters. Beck, Jakob Dylan. Peach-cornmeal cake. Next to the grapevines, dinner under the full moon.

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Poppyseed- dotted radishes with malibu raw Honey. Chef Helene Henderson. local popcorn with rosemary. rachel roberts, Alice Dodd. Bees. fresh eggs for dinner.

“I’m being approached because everybody wants to participate. The word spreads with the produce.”

neighbors, but frankly, they’re better to keep the menagerie from escaping.

On this overcast fall evening, you can find Henderson— private chef, author of The Swedish Table and former model—in her home kitchen, arranging slim grissini next to just-picked figs. The enamelware filled with herb-flecked butternut squash is ready to go next to bamboo steamers of lacquered cod. Sweet-salty date butter accompanies olive bread fresh from her baker, Trevor Grossman, and large peach-cornmeal cakes (“like an upside-down tarte tatin,” she explains) cover her kitchen table.

In the vein of Outstanding in the Field, progressive neighbor-hood fêtes and today’s underground urban supper clubs, Henderson and business partner Netti Bode’s Malibu Farm dinners have transformed her backyard into a de facto restaurant for residents and purveyors. With practically all of the organically grown ingredients harvested then and there, supplemented with artisanal edibles, she’s demonstrating a growing food culture in this seaside hamlet. (Note this year’s resurrection of the Malibu

Farmers’ Market and the garden focus of the Trancas Country Market under development as further evidence.) “I’m being approached because everybody wants to participate. The word spreads with the produce,” she says. “That’s how the lady with the goats found us.”

On the eve of her second meal series, a white tablecloth is set for 66 on the lawn. Clusters of friends seem to recognize each other as people from all industries—music, film, real estate, politics—mingle. Guests (those not in stilettos, that is) wander terraced garden levels to discover hors d’oeuvres created from local treasures such as house-cured honey gravlax on crostini and chilled dill “pickle” soup. The crowd is attended to by towheaded young servers. And yes, at Malibu Farm, it’s ok to feed the pets.

The $100-a-plate dinners sell out within a few hours. And this month, Henderson and Bode continue with cooking classes and Thanksgiving weekend feasts on November 18 and 19. If you can’t snag a spot, there might be more Malibu Farm to go around in the future…away from the range. malibu-farm.com. •