Tuesday, January 10, 2017.
Rejected @ Meril, We Find Safe Harbor @ Marcello's.
The Marys make themselves available for dinner when the radio show ends. They tell me where they are, and I go there, to find that they are not there, but a block away. I park on the corner thinking that I could have just left my Beetle in the radio parking garage, which is all of two blocks from our target: Meril.
Add an "E" to the beginning of the restaurant's name, and you have most of the story behind the place. It's the fourth New Orleans restaurant from Emeril Lagasse, opened a couple of months ago. It operates with about the same level of formality as Emeril's NOLA.
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Brussels sprouts.[/caption] Looking over the menu, we find what sounds initially like fast food. That's only the continuing trick among major chefs to stoke their everyday dishes with high-quality ra materials. What comes out of this is a list food that sounds very familiar even to a person who doesn't eat in ambitious restaurants often. Samples: boudin-stuffed tamales. Fried calamari with white beans, with the source of the squid specified. (Anyone know where Point Judith is? Or why it's important?) Meatballs with burrata. Lasagna Bolognese. Brussels sprouts with bacon. Nobody will be frightened away by Meril's menu. The reason we don't stay is that the Marys hadn't made a reservation, and the waiting list even for a spot at the counters that surround most of the dining room is over an hour. And that's about all we will learn about Meril today. [caption id="attachment_53686" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Roasted chicken at Marcello's. [/caption]
It's not too far from here to Marcello's, which is near the top of Mary Ann's Italian list. We found no table there when last we went a couple of weeks ago. The room is a little looser tonight, and we find seats in the back of the wine-filled main dining room.
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Meatballs and rustic sauce at Marcello's.[/caption]
As it has been in the past, Marcello's restaurant on the corner of Girod and St. Charles is excellent tonight. MA has her favored basics: meatballs with the excellent rustic-style tomato sauce, and an Italian salad with fried eggplant cubes. Mary Leigh begins with the truffled macaroni in its creamy sauce. She says that the sauce is pretty close in its creamy richness to fettuccine alfredo. I get no hint of the truffle aspect, but I never do for dishes like this. She also has a pan of roasted Brussels sprouts, which she shares with MA and me. Damn! We could have had this at Meril!
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Truffled penne pasta.[/caption]
My dinner is the best food on the table. I start with yesterday's soup--that's what they call it on the menu. It's a lightly creamy potage of root vegetables and herbs. Pretty good. The entree is superlative: half a roasted chicken with the bones out but the skin still present and crispy, with a bed of risotto under all.
It's been many months since the last time we were here at Marcello's. It was good in its early days, and seems to have become even better. That entire area of the CBD is getting better for living every time I find myself there. In the late 1970s I lived two blocks from where Marcello's is nowaround here in the later 1970s, and I wish I still did.
