Diary 1/19/2016: Cava And Manning's Chefs Come By.

[title type="h5"] Tuesday, January 19, 2016. Danny And Brewer. Taking It Out On The Road.[/title] My new Beetle makes the first of what will no doubt be many crossings of the Causeway. It is a surprising improvement over my old PT Cruiser, whose shock absorbers are over the hill. I’m running early, in order to begin the process of turning the PT over to Bridge House. I thought I would have to talk them into accepting it, but the man I spoke with is a listener to the radio show, and was very pleased to take the car off my hands. The radio show today features Danny Millan from Cava in Lakeview, and Chef Mike Brewer From Manning’s. Danny, who is a better restaurateur than he is a talker, reports that Cava is now open seven days a week and is busy. He’s thinking of opening for Sunday brunch. More talkative is Mike, who has a story worth telling. He is the new chef at Manning’s–the sports bar and restaurant on S. Peters at Lafayette Streets named for the famous family of NFL quarterbacks. Mike says he was asked by the restaurant’s owners (Harrah’s) the to give an assessment of Manning’s as he found it. He said it was a fine example of a Metairie sports bar. They laughed at this, and so did I. That about captures it. Mike, who has been in place at Manning’s for just two months, says he will have a much better restaurant in the near future. I’ll send Mary Ann over there to check it out, because a) burgers are a big deal for her, as are ribs; 2) the place has a courtyard for outdoor dining, and iii) the menu is new. I have dinner at Bistro Orleans. I do three live commercials for them every day, and I need to refresh my database of things to say about it. (And things not to say, of which there are a few.) Chef Archie Saurage has developped a few new oyster dishes. One involved fried oysters in a very rich sauce made with Brie. The sauce is flavored interestingly with herbs. It would taste good on a tongue depressor. The other new dish is a grilled oyster appetizer. It’s enough for an entree, served on half-shells with a buttery sauce riddled with crabmeat and sprinkled with what tasted to me like parmesan cheese. There’s a new salad, a hybrid of insalata Capresi and antipasto. Again, it’s filling enough to blunt the appetite for any subsequent courses. Overall, I find here a restaurant that gets a bit better every time I try it. I am also getting an ever-increasing number of calls from radio listeners about the place. The only complaint I hear is from Mary Ann, who had some kind of problem the first time she went, and can’t seem to get it out of her mind. I am sleepy as I drive home. The stress of dealing with the car wreck has been unexpectedly rough, more than it deserves to be. But almost everything is finished now. Tomorrow, Bridge House’s tow truck will extricate the PT Cruiser from the parking garage. Between the radio show and dinner, I empty its trunk of an enormous amount of stuff. There is not really room for it all in the Beetle’s trunk–the first index in which the PT is superior to the VW.