Tuesday, April 1, 2014.
Five-Star Restaurant In An Old Schwegmann's. Lucky Rooster.
The Thirty-Eighth Annual April Fool Restaurant Review appeared right on schedule. And disappeared. This year's contained all the standard elements:
1. It sounds too good and the prices far too low to be real.
2. It's in a location that sounds right, but doesn't actually exist. (This year, the corner of Harrison Avenue and Elysian Fields, in a long-shuttered Schwegmann's).
3. It is all things to all people. (In fact, I said those exact words were the restaurant's slogan.)
4. I never let on that the report is a joke, and just deny that I ever published or broadcast the report to anyone who bites for it.
In recent years, the Marys have been telling me that the report is cruel. I don't believe this, but lately I have toned them down. But I don't feel good about it. What kind of person can't take a harmless joke, if the only harm done is to his belief in his own superior intelligence? I think we ought to be reminded how easily we can be led to believe preposterous falsehoods.
The result of my softening was a lot of letters from people who said they bought the story up to a point where it stretched their credulity beyond the breaking point. A few of these actually sounded disappointed in this. Not as many people were taken in completely this year. Maybe this is because after all these years, a lot of my audience knows the annual joke is coming, and looks for it. Indeed, the web site traffic today was almost double what it normally is.
Mary Ann was in town this afternoon, and we went out for a late lunch at the Lucky Rooster. It's an Asian street-food concept, created by the owners of Juan's Flying Burrito and Slice Pizzeria. You would never know this too look at the place, but Lucky Rooster required a much more complicated and expensive buildout than any of the outfit's previous restaurants.
Mary Ann, who talks to those guys more often than I do, says that they had very particular ideas about this old building, but executing those ideas proved a challenge. The story is so complex that they published an extensive blog about the process and attached it to the restaurant's website (www.luckyroosternola.com).
They do seem to have hit the current Asian dining vogues dead-center. The clientele is cosmopolitan, ranging from Asians to office workers to families and tourists. Something about the place--which, despite the efforts put into it seems stark, but in an intentional way--engages the mind and palate.
[caption id="attachment_41896" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lucky Rooster dining room.[/caption]
And although most of the food can easily be categorized as Korean, Vietnamese, Thai or Chinese (but not Japanese, I noticed), almost every dish shows cross-pollination. Chinese steam buns with Korean bao-style grilled beef, for example).
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Pork steam bun, Korean bao style.[/caption]
We started with two of the baos, one made with pork ribs, the other with beef. I never have warmed up to steam buns, which always struck me as edible containers but nothing more. (You eat street food with the hands, of course.) What was inside the buns was interesting enough, with big flavors from both the long-cooked, moist meats and their thick sauces.
Thin, crisp, slices of bread--a lot like bruschetta--were spread with shrimp pate. Shrimp toast! Haven't had that in awhile. It was camouflaged by a grabful of the kinds of leafy green herbs you'd get on the side in the Vietnamese place. A variation on crab rangoon and crispy spring rolls came out under similar thatches next.
[caption id="attachment_41898" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Korean fried chicken (KFC).[/caption]
What they call KFC--Korean fried chicken--is a major specialty. The sauce makes the big statement, made with a garlic and sweet chili sauce of an alarmingly deep red color. On the side is a slaw made of kimchee. Its sauce could have been called a remoulade. All very good.
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Mussels Thai style.[/caption]
But not as good as the mussels. They ran both as a special and as a placeholder for another dish that involved crab claws. No crab claws were available, hence the mussels. The endpoint was a Thai-style curry, with a sauce liquid enough to eat like a soup, but with such an intense and complicated flavor that you had to slow down the eating.
[caption id="attachment_41900" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pork bahn mi.[/caption]
Mary Ann could not leave without a bahn mi--Vietnamese poor boy, in this case made with pork and the eight or eleven other ingredients that make these sandwiches so interesting.
[caption id="attachment_41901" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lemon bars at Lucky Rooster.[/caption]
I was surprised by the range of the dessert menu. A lemon bar could have been called a cheesecake for its richness. And the oversize fortune cookie--a crisp, flat beignet--informed me that I will compose a dozen more false restaurant reports on this date as I struggle through my tortuous life.
Lucky Rooster. CBD: 515 Baronne. 504-529-5825.
[title type="h6"] Yesterday || Tomorrow[/title]