[title type="h5"]Monday, June 23, 2014.
FAQs. Oyster Pizza?
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A long time ago, after I gave a talk to the downtown Rotary Club, I sat down for a few minutes with Tiger Flowers. He was an insurance man by that time, but he had a career before that as a radio announcer and then a sportscaster on early New Orleans television. I forget how it came up, but he told me that in his disk jockey days, listeners would call and ask to have their favorite records played. He often replied that had already played that record an hour or two ago. The listener then said that he or she wanted to hear it again. Tiger explained that many different songs was better than a few repeating songs.
"Well, if I had only known that playing the same hits over and over was the formula that would become Top 40 radio," he told me, "I could have become a very wealthy man!"
I thought about that as I began a new department in the NOMenu Daily. FAQ's (frequently-asked questions) are the Top 40 of the publishing business. And of informative radio shows like mine, too. I don't have to do anything special, because people naturally ask the same questions again and again. Which means a lot of people who don't call are interested in the same questions.
I think.
Dinner at New Orleans Food & Spirits. I find out today why Mary Ann wants to dine here so often lately. Turns out she sold them an ad a couple of weeks ago. There is no faster way to get on her good side.
I was thinking red beans when we entered. But the notion of eating cold oysters on this hot day took over, so here came eight big bivalves on ice. The oyster bar is a new and welcome addition to NOF&S which, like every other restaurant with an oyster bar, is also grilling them a la Drago.
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Oyster pizza.[/caption]
But it's only today that I notice a big Blodgett pizza oven behind the oyster bar. Pizza? Not only that, but an oyster pizza. I give that idea a one-in-eight chance of being good. I'm thinking that inside the oven, the oysters would throw off water, making the crust soggy. But they lay down so much mozzarella cheese on the crust and parmesan on the oysters that this problem doesn't occur. The flavor is in the direction of Drago's, with the herbs and garlic incorporated into the cheese. And I eat all but one slice. That one goes to Mary Ann, who also likes it, even though she's only a lukewarm devotee of oysters.
[title type="h5"]New Orleans Food & Spirits. Covington: 208 Lee Lane. 985-875-0432.
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Tuesday, June 24, 2014.
Auctioning "Brennan's." Namese.
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An ad arrives by email inviting me to observe the auction of all that is left of the old Brennan's on Royal Street. Most of the items are intangibles: the name, logos, website, recipes, etc. Also part of the lot is a collection of wines, which the ad says is over 1,000 bottles strong. What? Brennan's cellar had tens of thousands of bottles. Where's the rest of it?
I know that Ralph Brennan and partners--who own the building--are among the probable bidders for all the above. Seems to me we will have a restaurant named Brennan's again at 417 Royal Street. The opening date is September, when Chanticleer the rooster may show himself to be a phoenix.
No Round Table show on the radio. Mary Ann was too busy trying to get Mary Leigh on a flight home last week to line up any guests. I match this nonperformance by accomplishing very little in my office after the radio show--unless I can call taking a twenty-minute nap an accomplishment. I'd feel like a lazy bum for that had I not started writing at 6:30 this morning, or kept on going after I got home until nearly midnight.
My first dinner at Namese has me sitting at the counter, a seat away from a regular customer who starts into telling me what he thinks are the best dishes. And how "authentic" Vietnamese food is limited to these dishes in those restaurants, and not those in these. I am reminded of the way fanatical customers of the early sushi bars in these parts would pontificate to total strangers as to what constitutes "real" Japanese sushi. I always found this offensive. I know it's ironic for me to complain about that. But I never dispense advice unless asked.
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Namese, a former Shell.[/caption]
Namese is in a building I know was once a Shell station because a) it still has the 1960s design Shell used for its stations when they all still had mechanics on duty--in two hydraulic lift bays, yet--and 2) because back when the station was new I walked right in front of it every day after hopping off the Tulane bus en route to Jesuit.
It hasn't been a gas station for a long time, though. Hieu Doan's parents are of the generation of Vietnamese who fled here after the war. They operated a seafood and grocery store with a deli serving sandwiches in the gas station from the 1990s until recently. Hieu and his sister thought that the appreciation of Vietnamese food in New Orleans was great enough to support a restaurant, so they remodeled the Shell station and opened shop about nine months ago.
Hieu is a young man and speaks uninflected English. His perspective on Vietnamese food is logical: he doesn't have to cook the same dishes that the first generation of Vietnamese Orleanians did.
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Fried squid.[/caption]
I started with fried calamari, rings cut from big but not colossal squid, with a couple of dipping sauces. I was just beginning to think about how these would be better still with smaller squid when the entree came out. I should have asked not to get everything at the same time.
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Bun with everything at Namese.[/caption]
But it was not a big deal, because the main was bun, a dish I much prefer to the more popular pho soup. It's the same idea, without the broth, and with cool (not cold, just cool) noodles. The pile of pasta is covered with an assortment of interesting items: a shrimp cake, an egg roll, grilled beef and pork, and the usual stack of fresh herbs and greens. The serving was far beyond being finishable, but I got most of it down. The platter looked and tasted great.
By this time, the dining room was full. This has been a routine condition in the early months of Namese, and holding firm enough that Hieu is talking about an expansion. I hope not only that he goes through with it, but also that it's a trigger for other restaurants at this corner. Which not too long ago was the home of the long-running, excellent Korean restaurant Genghis Khan.
[title type="h5"]Namese. Mid-City: 4077 Tulane Ave.[/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris July 01, 2014 12:01 in
