Camping Out In Kenner, With Sushi.

[title type="h5"]Wednesday, January 15, 2013.[/title] The most inconvenient aspect of the new radio schedule came to pass today. The station's salesman John Volpe (in the radio biz even longer than me, having been one of the original Rock Of New Orleans deejays on WRNO in the late 1960s) sold a remote broadcast to the Sake Café in Kenner. Years ago, it became the norm that when we had a remote from a restaurant, we would follow it with an Eat Club dinner, since I was already there anyway. But with a four-hour gap between the show and the dinner, most of the sponsors who want to take a swing at the Eat Club ball eschew the remote broadcast, which costs extra for engineering and other complications. [caption id="attachment_40836" align="alignnone" width="480"] Looking through the sign inside Sake Cafe in Kenner.
[/caption] But not this one. We did the show at the usual time, but with a unique effect. Many of the customers who came in for lunch joined me to talk about the restaurant--something that happens only rarely. Most of them were surprised to see me there. Kenner is too far from the radio headquarters downtown for it to make any sense to return between my two appearances. At rush hour, the traffic is so bad that it can take an hour to get to Kenner. So I brought my laptop and spent the three hours working on a proposal for the book my New York publisher asked me to forward. Although I have a few book ideas in my head, none were fleshed out enough for them to make sense. I've already put some eight hours into this effort, and I'm still nowhere close to sending it in. The Eat Clubbers began to arrive around six. The first was a lady who had recently retired from being an anesthetic nurse. Then a sparse parade of couples, most of whom were new to our Eat Club events. I was hoping to attract many such, and perhaps even a few people who had never tried sushi before. And we did, even though I suspected that the cold weather might impinge on the appetite for raw fish. [caption id="attachment_40838" align="alignnone" width="480"] Top: three tartares. Below: Crawfish green curry dip.[/caption] This dinner was much better than I was expecting. Nine dishes came out in four courses, starting with an assortment of three different fish pounded into tartares, Each was topped with a unique caviar and other garnishes. Between them were little segments of a tuna and salmon rice paper roll. Best dish of the night, this was. That was followed by some salmon rolled up around snow crab, baked, then drizzled with eel sauce. And now a page from the Thai cookbook: a green curry with crawfish, thickened into a dip. Two kinds of sake--very different from one another--wetted our whistles in between. An assortment of seaweed and cucumber salads kept up the pace. The main course for the sushi eaters was generous beyond all necessity. I counted twenty-one pieces, concentrated mostly on tuna, yellowtail and salmon. Perfect temperature, nice moist rice, all just about perfect. [caption id="attachment_40840" align="alignnone" width="377"] Crispy grouper with Asian chili sauce.[/caption] The non-eaters of raw fish had to make do with a fillet of grouper with a chili sauce--but that was certainly not the end of the world. It was a beautiful dish, and nearly as generous as the sushi platter. As I went from table to table, all I heard were happy reactions. This dinner increased my esteem of the Sake Café at least two clicks. It was freezing and windy when I stopped at a gas station on the way home. A well-dressed woman pulled a new-model SUV next to my car, rolled down her window, and asked if I could give her $13 so she could check into a hotel. I rolled the money into a ball and threw it through her window. I wonder what the story was behind that. [title type="h5"]Sake Cafe. Kenner: 817 W Esplanade Ave. 504-468-8829. [/title]