Diary 09|25|2014: Eat Club At Cafe Giovanni.

[title type="h5"]Thursday, September 25, 2014. Café Giovanni Celebrates 23 With A New Bar.[/title] When I arrived at the radio station, a few people accosted me to learn whether a remote broadcast from Café Giovanni should be on the air. Nobody seemed to know. I didn't think so, but now that the subject came up, I wasn't sure. Somebody thought to call Chef Duke, who knew nothing about it, thereby settling the issue. We should have known. Ever since the radio show moved to its present noon-three p.m. schedule, we have done very few remotes. Not many of the restaurants where we hold Eat Club events are even open at lunch. Café Giovanni isn't, either. I walk over there around six. A few new Eat Clubbers hung around in the bar, where Chef Duke was doling out a new concocktail. (That's a word I just made up, a crossbreed of "cocktail" and "concoction." It means a mixed drink made with ingredients not well known to most drinkers. I wonder if it will make it into the dictionary someday. If it does, remember where you read it first.) [caption id="attachment_43985" align="alignleft" width="425"] Chef Duke.[/caption]This one was more or less a Negroni--one of my two or three favorite drinks--but with Aperol instead of Campari, making for a less-bitter flavor. I thought it was pretty good, and I almost went back for seconds. Chef Duke has changed his bar since the last time I was there. For the past decade, it's sported a sort of bordello look, with lots of saturated red draperies, and some drawings of more or less naked women. Such a theme seems about right for a restaurant in the French Quarter, but I never felt comfortable with it. (Mary Ann says this is my altar-boy personality coming out.) [caption id="attachment_43992" align="alignleft" width="320"] Diamante Gallina and the Italian Quartet.[/caption]We have a substantial crowd tonight, numbering over sixty people. We also have guest musicians. Diamante Gallina is an Italian singer of jazz numbers. She vocalized while her all-male backup quartet played deftly. Great sound. Usual problem: dining rooms with both talking people and amplified musical organizations don't go well together. [caption id="attachment_43991" align="alignnone" width="480"] Bruschetta. (pronounced "broos-KET-tah."[/caption] The seven-course, seven-wine menu made the dinner an easy sell. It's a standard selection of Chef Duke's greatest hits. We start with a bruschetta of tomatoes and herbs. Then the spicy seafood Caprese--the classic tomato-and-mozzarella coldcoction (hey! Another neologism!) but with crabmeat and shrimp in a variation on ravigote sauce. Now something new: alligator meatballs. These are stiff, almost tough, with the mild flavor that comes from that ferocious reptile. I am no fan of alligator. The sauce was interesting, though. Billed as "blackened Alfredo," its color was more like a day-glo orange, from blackening seasoning, I guess. [caption id="attachment_43989" align="alignnone" width="421"] Alligator meatball.[/caption] Another dish we knew was coming even before we saw the menu now comes: ravioli bolognese, a major Café Giovanni specialty. It's just your old friend tomato-and-meat sauce, a hair's breadth away from spaghetti and meatballs. But when it's done well, it can't be beat, and that is true here. The sauce flows over cheese ravioli. [caption id="attachment_43988" align="alignnone" width="480"] Ravioli Bolognese.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_43987" align="alignnone" width="480"] Snappper with seafood risotto and crabmeat, best dish of the night. [/caption] The best dish of the night is the Gulf fish. I never asked what it was, but my guess is red snapper, cut in generously thick demi-fillets. Open-grilled to crispy edges, it's set atop a crabmeat risotto, with more crabmeat sharpened with limoncello over the top. I made a mental note to come back and have an entree of this. [caption id="attachment_43986" align="alignnone" width="480"] Duck Decatur.[/caption] The savory finale is duck Decatur, a long-running dish involving the heart of the duck breast. The sauce is pure Cajun, with tasso and mushrooms in a brown matrix, smoothed out with some cream. They used to serve this with shrimp, which I never thought was a great idea. This, I like. Dessert is reconstructed cheesecake, whatever that is. I never saw it. By this time, Chef Duke is in the dining room, giving accolades to his staff, the city, the reconstruction of Decatur Street from the sleaziest part of the French Quarter to where it's happening, and the Eat Club. He introduces me as "Mr. Romance," something he must have heard from Angela Hill. Mary Ann has a good laugh at that idea, and so do I. I know my faults. [caption id="attachment_43993" align="alignnone" width="480"] The Eat Club at Cafe Giovanni.[/caption] I have the Eat Club trained to egg me on to sing a song whenever we come to this restaurant. But I was reluctant to get in the way of the Italian Quartet, so good are they. Besides, none of them know any songs in English--certainly not my usual "Where Or When." I don't know anything Italian other than "Volare" and such, which the Quartet had already covered. I returned to my table, but the pianist, after fooling around with some keys, somehow figured out--and very well, too--the melody of "Where Or When," and away we went. After two lines he was deftly weaving between my off-notes. No tomatoes were let fly, so I guess it was okay. [title type="h5"]Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154. [/title]