[title type="h5"]Bella Luna's Fettuccine Returns @ Middendorf's (!)[/title]
The year was 1993. I tried an experiment: what would happen if I invited radio show listeners to join me for dinner? The first thing was that our table at Bella Luna in the French Market filled up with the desired eight people immediately. We began working on a whole case of wine, which we would kill. Then Chef/Owner Horst Pfeifer brought a hollowed-out wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano to tableside, and tossed the thin fettuccine he'd made from scratch that afternoon into the cheese wheel, making Alfredo sauce as he went. He shaved white truffles over each person's plate, running the food cost for this dinner far beyond the $40 we were paying for it.
The year was 2006. The city wouldn't repair the roof of the Bella Luna space in the French Market. Chef Horst and his wife Karen couldn't reopen, so they left Bella Luna behind. Not long after but far away, they bought the famous catfish restaurant Middendorf's and moved to Manchac to run it. People who knew Chef Horst from Bella Luna started asking him why he couldn't serve his fabulous fettuccine there. He replied that it didn't really fit into the menu of fried and boiled seafood at Middendorf's. Time went on, and people kept asking for fettuccine.
The year is 2015. In a lucid moment, Chef Horst and Karen asked themselves, "Why not?" The had the machine that made the fettuccine at Bella Luna. And people kept asking for it. So here it is. Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from now until the end of September, Middendorf's offers Chef Horst's fettuccine, abetted if you like with shrimp, chicken, lump crabmeat, fried soft shell crab, or whatever else within reason. (Which excludes white truffles, whose price is now over $2000 a pound.) You can also buy the fettuccine and the cheese to cook at home at a much more reasonable cost per pound.
And then it will be Oktoberfest. We'll tell you about that next month, when the Eat Club will probably have its annual Middendorf's German dinner.
Middendorf's
River Parishes: Exit 15 off I-55, Manchac. 985-386-6666. www.middendorfsrestaurant.com/.
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