[title type="h5"]Saturday, April 11, 2015.
Unexpected Failure To Rain. [/title]
Day Three of the French Quarter Festival, and Show #2 of my appearance there. Rain--a lot of it--is expected. But when I strike out for the French Quarter from Abita Springs, the sun is shining. It does get cloudier as we cross the puddle, but Mary Ann is at the wheel, and we arrive with plenty of time to spare. I walk the eleven blocks from the radio station to Jackson Square and commence talking at noon.
Someone has arranged for the food vendors four blocks away in the Old U.S. Mint to come over to our microphones. Daniel Esses of Three Muses is the first of them. I don't know why, but I keep forgetting he is there in the Marigny Triangle, with a restaurant that fills the place every evening. I do know his food--he ran the kitchens of a couple of other places I liked over the years.
Looking over the list of chefs for the Mint, it seems that it's the place to be this year. The Galley, Rue 127, Squeal Barbecue, and Café Reconcile, for instance. Also, if it did start raining, one could always duck into the Mint, a solidly-roofed place.
Mary Ann co-hosted the show, and also went around getting chefs to visit. It never did rain, near as I can tell. It did yesterday: they actually shut down the festivities for a couple of hours to get people out of the lightning. The crowds are much attenuated from those of a typical French Quarter Festival. But you can't count on any day in New Orleans as not having rain.
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Acme's famous wedge salad.[/caption]
Back at the ranch, Mary Leigh and I go out to dinner at the Acme. The usual: wedge salad with blue cheese, raw and grilled oysters, oysters remoulade. We have a joyous visit with one another. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems to me that more of our daddy-daughter times are reverting to the way they were when she was a little girl, and Daddy could do no wrong. But we had to get through that teenage-young woman phase, during which most parents are regarded as fools, no matter how much their kids love them deep down inside.[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Sunday, April 12,2015.
The Opera. Galatoire's 33.[/title]
On my way out of church this morning, the pastor told me that I could have given a reprise performance of the Easter Sequence I sang last week. The major Caholic holidays are celebrated as octaves--eight days, of which today is the last for this Easter. Hmm. I could have sung it an octave higher or lower, I suppose. I'll remember that next year, unless the others in the parish remember it, too.
Mary Ann says that she has always wanted to see a live performance of The Marriage of Figaro. She has never been to an opera, nor had any other interest in it. Today is the last performance of the season for the New Orleans Opera--which, we should be prideful to know, is the oldest opera organization in the Western Hemisphere. We decide to go.
Getting tickets was a surprising endeavor. The diagram online seemed to indicate that the Mahalia Jackson Theater was nearly sold out. It wasn't, but there were a lot more people there than we expected.
The cheap seats at $51 looked terrible. We wind up with a pair of ducats which, with all the surcharges, come to an even $100 per person. I bought them without MA weighing in. She would have struggled with that decision all day long, and for the rest of her life if we wound up not going.
I knew that someday I would develop an interest in opera. But this was my first time, too. (Not counting solo performances of major opera stars I have attended.) Because a number of friends are opera buffs, I know more than nothing about it. Mary Ann, however, was surprised to learn that the production went on for well over three hours. I decided not to tell her that, either.
We are there early, despite the rain and because she was driving. We have glasses of bubbly wine. But we are not allowed to take them into the theater, where an explanation of the plot and other things to watch out for was being given. We slug the wine down and learn that that the singer playing Figaro is making his debut. Had I not known that, I would not have guessed it. Indeed, he was the most impressive singer on the stage. And that was saying something. This was quite a performance by all involved, including the orchestra and maestro Robert Lyalls. We were studying the musicians especially because one of them is a friend: Daniel Lelchuk, the Gourmet Cellist.
I don't know how anyone with even a slight interest in singing wouldn't love this. I know I did. Mary Ann isn't into singing, but she is happy she now knows what it was all about. And, she declared, she's finished with the opera for the rest of her life.
Mary Leigh is in town working at her new job at Sucre. She gets off work just as Figaro's wedding gets under way. I make a suggestions that I know both the Marys will like: dinner at Galatoire's 33 Cocktails And Steak. This is the first-class steakhouse in the building next door that Galatoire's bought a couple of years ago. Excepting some early meals there, the place has been pretty good.
The rain has dialed up a bit, and we hustle along to Bourbon Street. I look through the window of the flagship Galatoire's, and see that it is largely empty at sixish. Must be the rain. Even fewer people are at the steakhouse, but I expected that.
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Crabcake at 33.[/caption]
MA has a crab cake that she says is superb. It certainly looked that good, but she didn't save me a taste. That alone tells me all I need to know. ML has a salad. I get turtle soup, which is clearly the same as next door, and very good, at that.
[caption id="attachment_39563" align="alignleft" width="480"]
Galatoire's 33 strip sirloin.[/caption]
The Marys split a filet mignon, and send it back for more cooking twice. It's still not right. I guess the kitchen assumes that anyone sharing a table with me would not possibly want a well-done steak. But they don't know Mary Ann.
I have a very good. medium-rare, Pittsburgh-style strip sirloin, with New Orleans bordelaise. That's butter, garlic, and olive oil. Next time, I will ask to have this made with the same garlic butter they put on snails. Otherwise, the steak was exactly what I had in mind.
ML doesn't care about opera, and shows little interest. She tells what she did at the bakery all day. She is well on her way to becoming a great dessert maker.
I have only one complaint to voice about the opera. I encounter only three or four people I know among the hundreds who are there. I suspect the New Orleans Opera gets a lot of audience from out of town. How many places even have an opera company, let alone one this good?
[title type="h5"]Galatoire's 33 Bar & Steak. French Quarter: 215 Bourbon St. 504-335-3932. [/title]
