Jefferson Bailey's B & B Café Is A Real Crowd-Pleaser. By Rebecca Cook EVERYTHING ABOUT TUCSON'S Temple of Music and Art leads one to anticipate a theatrical experience. The charmingly irregular red brick courtyard with the bubbling fountain, the second-floor outdoor balcony, the ascending side staircase, the contrast of the white stucco exterior against the forest green doors and trim. And, of course, inside is the classic lyceum-style main stage, the Holsclaw Theatre, where echoes of performances past seem to fill the air. This evening, however, the first act unfolds not on the stage but within the confines of the B & B Café, the Temple's in-house restaurant. Breakfast and lunch are served here Tuesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., but when the Arizona Theatre Company stage is in performance, B & B responds with its own show. Under the visionary direction of Jefferson Bailey, the B & B is transformed on theater nights into a spectacle of international scope and style. It's true the usual fare here is invariably impressive (I can think of no finer pleasure than B & B's delicately herbed tarragon chicken salad; and the tirimisu is the best I've ever eaten). But when the curtain rises inside, Bailey's restaurant truly shines. Where last year hungry theatergoers could choose from a small a la carte menu or a prix fixé meal, this year audiences are feted at the B & B with a Queen Mary-style, sailing-the-Atlantic smorgasbord. Lest there be any confusion, let me make one thing abundantly clear. "Buffet" is not a synonym for "smorgasbord." Bailey is a self-defined "Dano-phile" who has scripted his smorgasbord to meet the precise specifications of this genre. Buffets can be haphazard events with any number of food combinations, but with a true smorgasbord, there must be painstaking attention to composition and detail. Literally translating from Swedish into "bread and butter," the smorgasbord is a table consisting of specific kinds of food. Just like the play we're about to see, this table is divided into two acts. The first course/act consists of a selection of herring in light dill-oil marinade, thinly-sliced and mesquite-smoked salmon, vinegar-spiked cucumber salad, a gorgeous three-layered vegetable terrine of broccoli, turnip and carrot, delicate pâté maison, a salad of mixed baby greens, herbed brie and fresh fruit. Once our plates are heaped, we return to our table happily unsure whether we'll have sufficient room for the rest of the feast. Everything is so fresh it sparkles with flavor. Herring is something people seem to adore or avoid entirely. Bailey's herring may win a few converts from the latter group. It's neither too fishy nor flavored too heavily with herbs. Of course we return for the second act, succumbing to the age-old desire to see how it all turns out. Roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, cold roast chicken remoulade and thinly sliced rare roast beef with a horseradish cream await at the long table. I take a little of each, a delightful and non-limiting feature of the smorgasbord experience. Accompanying our meat is a supporting cast of brussels sprouts, tomatoes stuffed with mushroom duxelles, cubes of broiled new potatoes and a nutty, semi-sweet orzo sesame salad. Again, there isn't one weak performance in the production. Even the brussels sprouts, which are far from my favorite vegetable, are sweetly palatable. The meats are unfailingly tender and flavorful, and the stuffed tomatoes deserve a Tony Award for best supporting actor. Missing for this performance is the chilled bottle of aquavit that Bailey usually has conspicuously placed on the table. One can easily spot the well-initiated by their queries about the absence of this heady Scandinavian liquor

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