For all my bachelor days, I used to relish lunch at my favorite restaurant, Antoine’s. People often ask me what it is about Antoine’s that pops it out of the crowd for me.
That’s easy. Tradition. Going back so many years doing the same thing, and creating the original of so many dishes that are now a part of the American culinary landscape. Like Oysters Rockefeller. And I just like the way it feels. So old. Mary Ann calls restaurants like this “old farteries,” but most people call them grande dames. We have five here: Antoine’s, Galatoire’s, Arnaud’s, Tujaques, and Broussard’s. It’s no contest for me. I love Antoine’s.
Maybe the high point of my long association with this my favorite restaurant is my surprise 60th birthday party. For the entirety of my career, people have given me great bottles of wine. Winemakers who came on the show never came empty-handed. Over the course of 25 years, I had amassed quite a collection. Add to that the oenophiles I know who have generously shared some great stuff, and my “cellar” is impressive. Or was.
I don’t have a cellar at all, it’s stocked in my rather large pantry in the back. Had I married someone else, we might have gone through all this wine. But my wife is not a drinker, and with no one to share it with, the collection grew. After hearing me lament this situation for 25 years, my wife decided it would be a great idea to gather all my gourmet friends from my bachelor days and go through some of this wine on my 60th birthday.
She knew where to do this, so she planned an elaborate scenario to make it happen. Knowing how I love wearing a tux, she arranged a scheme with Wendy, Antoine’s marketing guru. Wendy called to invite me to give a speech at a fake black tie event at Antoine’s. Mary Ann brought our entire wine collection to Antoine’s for the professionals to sort out. Walking into Antoine’s and seeing people I knew was always a given, and seeing all these people from my distant past still didn’t register, even after I arrived in the Proteus Room and saw them all seated together. It was one of the best nights of my life. I will never forget it, and we did go through an enormous amount of wine.
I still make it to Antoine’s quite regularly, but the weekly tradition was never revived. Mainly because my work load for about twenty of those years had been crushing. But the torch has been passed to the next generation, and my wife has taken an expanded role in the business, to put it mildly. Some free time has come my way now. Ironically, it is she who is trying to re-institute my tradition.
And so it was that we went to Antoine’s for lunch last Friday. The place was packed, It was Essence Festival and it was hopping. A line in the front room to get in. We had a reservation and moved to the back large room where we always sit. Our favorite waiter Charles was off, so we had owner Rick Blount’s son. Very cute, said my wife. Rick came over to explain that his son was trying this out, and that so far it was going well. Is he taking it over? My wife asked. Rick demurred. TBD was the obvious answer to that question.
I ordered tomato basil soup and some souffle potatoes. These seemed a little off, but I think the sheer volume going out of the kitchen was the culprit here. Tomato basil soup was everything I wanted it to be.
MA cannot come here without getting the crabmeat ravigote and shrimp remoulade combo, served on shredded iceberg lettuce with a tomato. This was a slice of red Creole tomato, which thrilled MA. She also got the lunch special for $20.19 because she wanted to see how it went. I got my usual entree, the Oysters 2-2-2.
One of the first choices in the lunch special is three grilled oysters. These were extra-delicious to Mary Ann, who feels that there cannot be too much parmesan cheese on such oysters. I couldn’t disagree more. These were good, but too much cheese.
She was a little disappointed in her entree of fried chicken, which was a piece of dark meat chicken and some mac’n’cheese, on a plate with turnip greens. The chicken was surprisingly sweet, and we learned it was drizzled with honey. The mac’n’cheese was a little bland but very creamy, so the turnip greens were her favorite thing on this plate. My oysters were solid, as usual, but a little small. This spillway thing is wreaking havoc.
For dessert I had a delicious bread pudding.
Rick has a special welcome cocktail each day for 25 cents. These are made of flavored vodkas he has collected from distributors who include them with every order. Today was grapefruit flavored. MA wished she had finished off about ten at this price, because when we left the restaurant the car had been towed.
Antoine’s
713 St Louis New Orleans
504-581-4422
Mon-Sat
Lunch 11:30-2
Dinner 5:30-9
Sunday 10:30-2
antoines.com
