Three times--always on a Friday, always on the spur of the moment--Mary Ann and I failed to get a table for dinner at Kingfish. We finally made it in tonight, through the simple strategy of getting a reservation.
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Kingfish dining room and bar.[/caption]
I walked the six blocks from the radio station to the restaurant, and found Mary Ann parked on Chartres just off Conti, across the street from the restaurant, in a space that would become perfectly legal in ten minutes. As I've mentioned in this journal before (but not lately), Mary Ann is the Parking Witch. She finds the best possible openings wherever she goes. She says she does this by believing that the space will be there. This theory is only slightly denigrated by the hundreds of dollars in parking fines and immobilizations she has had to put up with over the years.
Except for two small matters, this was the perfect night to try
Kingfish. The restaurant had a $45 Reveillon menu that sounded excellent, with a pair of choices in each of four courses.
The young woman who served our table had quite a story to tell about herself. She is only recently arrived in New Orleans, for the first time. She turned up all over the rest of the world first, and said that every place she's been was satisfying in different ways.
She let us know that the bar was run by members of the new generation of mixologists, who stood ready with the finest of tipples to make sharp-edged cocktails both ancient and modern.
I saw absinthe suisesse on the cocktail card. I haven't had one of those in years, largely because it's a drink far out of vogue. Brennan's and Commander's Palace kept it alive for a few decades. The ingredients are interesting: Herbsaint or Pernod (instead of absinthe, which only lately has become legal again), orgeat syrup (it has an almond flavor, and is hard to find), egg white, and half-and-half. It's in the same family as a Ramos gin fizz, but with a totally different flavor.
The supply of drinkers familiar with absinthe suisesse is small. This may explain why they served me a broken drink, the white opaque layer lying above a mostly-clear one. The same effect would show up in the complimentary brandy milk punch that came with dessert. Both drinks tasted fine, but I had to keep stirring them to keep them mixed up.
That was one of the minor glitches I mentioned few inches above. The other was that Chef Greg Sonnier was out of the restaurant, involved in the Tales of the Toddy event going on this weekend. Such an absence is no big deal, if the restaurant is well managed. If a place falls apart when the chef is out, neither the chef nor the restaurant is very good to begin with.
Tonight's dinner proved that proposition. Not only did Greg not so much as call in, but for the first two-thirds of the dinner not a soul on the staff thought we were anyone other than tourists. Despite all that, the food was sharply turned out from beginning to end, and better than I was expecting. Which is saying something, because Kingfish has received much praise in its first year.
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Daube glacess at Kingfish.[/caption]
The waitress said that she liked the grilled cheese sandwich with the oysters and fennel. Maybe I would have tried it, but the other Reveillon appetizer was unique. Daube glacee is the cousin of hogshead cheese, made with beef and usually served cold. In this case it came out warm enough for its gelatinous parts to melt down atop a mini-mesa of spaetzle--the irregular knurdles of pasta from central Europe. This was very good, even though it messed with an old local holiday classic.
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Fried dumplings with sausage stuffing.[/caption]
Mary Ann liked the daube, but she was more pleased still by a quartet of fried Chinese-style dumplings, inside of which was mostly sausage. Meanwhile, I was warming myself up with a large cup of a nearly-ideal, dark-roux, smoked rabbit gumbo. This is the sort of thing Greg does without having to exert himself.
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Crab chop. More like a crab cake, and very good.[/caption]
In lieu of an entree, Mary Ann received what the menu called a crab chop. That's the revival of an old West End dish made by forming crab stuffing into what looks like a meat chop, and shoving a big crab claw into one end of it to look like the bone. Nobody was fooled by this, but it was still on the menu at Bruning's when Katrina hit.
This crab chop was different in being made mostly of crabmeat. It was really a crab cake in the shape of a ball. Mary Ann, who is not given to verbal appreciations of food, was much in the thrall of this thing.
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Capriolo venison chop.[/caption]
On my plate, completely by coincidence, was a double chop of capriolo venison. Identically the same species and cut I found so thoroughly awful two days ago. Where that one was dry and tasteless, this was juicy, crusty, and served with--what the?--hibiscus-roselle reduction. Whatever that is. Juiciness dominated the dish, with fried potato shoestrings to add textural contrast. A perfect dish for the weather, the Reveillon, and the restaurant.
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Above, three ice creams. Below: ginger and spice pudding.[/caption]
Desserts were three kinds of ice cream, and a ginger and pumpkin "pudding cake"--a perfect description. Very moist, a bit rich, with aromatic spices enough to suggest the season. The milk punch, even in its settled-out version, was the perfect end to this fine, very Louisiana meal. I will remember it as one of the best Reveillon dinners ever. Chef Greg gets it.
Kingfish. French Quarter: 337 Chartres St. 504-598-5005.
