Wednesday, April 11, 2018. Dark And Unfamiliar. The, Brilliance In Food And Music! The drive home last night from the Best Chefs event was nostalgic and creepy at the same time. During the six years when most of my life was staged in or around the University of New Orleans, I knew all the buildings, restaurants (very few) and private neighborhoods. I have had very little occasion to return to those parts since I landed my first big job, well away from UNO. The whole area has become foreign territory now. I felt this especially cold as I drove around what used to be a toilet factory. The lights were low, few cars shared their portions of Franklin Avenue and Lakeshore Drive, and I had to study the road marker to know exactly where I was. It was the first time I'd driven the entirety of Lakeshore Drive in decades.
Tom's Guide To the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Food appeared not long after after the Festival itself did. The event made a splash from the outside, with the vast amounts of food being doled out. A lot of people supposed they could sample all the food and drink. I always tried to do that myself, but now know that it's impossible. The radio station asked me to write and record a twenty-one-part guide to the best eats. No problem. I started in on that project today. As usual, everything else that could possibly loom has done so, but that's media for you.
Thursday, April 12, 2018. Borgne Again. Mary And and I were deep into the perennial discussion as to where we will go for dinner tonight. The meal will have to fit between a restaurant dinner and a more leisurely sampling from the meny at Borgne.
That restaurant, on the ground floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, is the outlook of Brian Landry. He's brilliant enough to carry the place conceptually, without reference to Chef John Besh, who is keeping a low profile these days.
We started with some broiled oysters--sort of in the direction of the omnipresent, but with a denser topping. We finished those off quickly in favor of a gumbo for MA and crawfish bisque for me. We finished it off with a banana case with caramel and a little chocolate.
All the way through the eating of all this, I kept thinking that, despite my enjoyment of this kind of cooking (very much Southeast Louisiana in style), we almost never eat at Borgne. I resolve to fix that in the near future. This is too good an eatery for such a disguised (which is to say "hotel") restaurant.
nd all that discussed and acted upon, we are off the the Orpheum Theater for an evening of classical music from the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, who are fresh back from Carnegie Hall. MA and I have added the LPO to be among our most enjoyable non-food entertainments.
Borgne. CBD: 601 Loyola Ave (Hyatt Regency Hotel). 504-613-3860.
