Diary 1|24, 26|2017: Willa Jean For Oyster Chowder. Impastato Cellars For Eat Club

Tuesday, January 24, 2017. Working Hard To Be Daily. Dinner At Willa Jean's.

I'm waiting for a visit from the AT&T repair technician tomorrow. In the meantime, I write all I normally would, but without an internet connection I couldn't publish the stuff online. So I go to the radio station early, with the idea of assembling the newsletter in my radio office. Trouble was, the radio computer is out of synch with my home unit. And compiling all the files I need to get the newsletter out is a daunting task. The hundreds of drawings and the thousands (no exaggeration) of photos. The links to specific pages. It was rough, took hours, and the pages looked funky. But I did get a full NOMenu Daily out today. That will not be possible tomorrow. I have a remote broadcast followed by an Eat Club dinner, all on the North Shore. And I have no place to work over there until my regular connection is restored. I feel utterly incompetent, even though none of these problems are my fault. Mary Ann is in town today, to keep Mary Leigh's dog Bauer happy while our daughter attends a company party. She has been developing a social circle in the place where she works, which is apparently an enlightened place to be employed. When I get off the radio, MA leaves Bauer to his rest, and she has dinner with the other dog in her life. The two of us meet at Willa Jean's, Chef John Besh's diner across from the downtown Rouse's. The Marys both like the place. I have been there only once, about a year ago. It's a spacious, pleasant L-shaped room that seems to have been caught in the process of deciding whether to be a coffee-and-pastry house, or a full-fledged eatery with a somewhat abbreviated menu. With such an oversupply of coffee cafes as we have around town, I'm voting for the diner. But that word doesn't quite catch it, either. There's a burger, but only a few other sandwiches. A few salads. One soup (a high point; more on that in a mo). And three or four platters. But it all adds up to something pleasant enough. We began with a cheese dip based on feta, artichokes, and a couple other ingredients, loaded into a crock and baked until the top layer is crunchy. MA--my dip expert--loves this. I like it too, with nice, crunchy, buttery crostini to scoop up the dip. So here is another John Besh restaurant with hearty, crusty bread of a kind we never get quite enough of around our town. The dip and fixings are easily enough for three people at least. I followed that with oyster chowder. Big bowl, milky (as opposed to creamy) broth, chips of bacon, chives, potato dice, and, of course, oysters. I ask for Tabasco but find it was not needed by the broth. I love soups like this, and this was everything I hoped for. Just one complaint: not quite enough oysters. But at $12, it's still a bargain. Now another big bowl filled with arugula, tossed with little balls of white cheese and topped with thick slices of orange-colored beets. Also in here are some orange wedges with the rind cut away. And a few pieces of grapefruit. Unfortunately, grapefruit is incompatible with a medication taken by a lot of people. (I'm one.) I should pay more attention to menus to avoid such ingredients, because if I had I would have eaten the whole salad except the grapefruit. It's up to the eater, I say. I find my dessert at the pastry counter. It's a tall muffin made of cornbread with something slightly creamy in the center and a butter icing over the top. And a café au lait that came out lukewarm. But the very pleasant server was quick to fix that. If this restaurant had been in business when I lived five blocks away in the old Faubourg St. Marie, the revived neighborhood would be even more popular than it's become.

Willa Jean. CBD: 611 O'Keefe St. 605-509-7334.

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Wednesday, January 25, 2017. Eat Club @ Impastato's In Madisonville.

There was no possibility that I would get a newsletter out today. My only accessible, usable computer is at the radio station. But we have an Eat Club dinner at Impastato Cellars tonight, preceded by a live broadcast from their North Shore location. The best I can do is write the whole thing, and send it out to subscribers tomorrow--if the AT&T technician shows up and can do the job. At least I'll have proof that I am not just taking the day off. The dinner plays out as usual on the North Shore. We have about fifty-five Eat Clubbers signed up, but we had about ten no-shows. This has been the case for every North Shore dinner for twenty years. No telling how many people will, while getting ready to drive ten to fifty miles, decide at the last minuted that it's too much trouble. But Joe Impastato came to the rescue by having over twenty of his regulars attend. Whatever the numbers said, the actuality of the dinner was thoroughly enjoyable, said everyone I talked with. Antonio Molosini, who markets the wines we will have tonight, is one of the funniest speakers I've ever heard. He had the whole room in stitches, starting with his standard line, "I grew up in an Italian town not far away--Bogalusa." He pronounces the town's name with a heavy Italian accent, which he comes by honestly. The dinner began with the usual seafood appetizers: crab claws sauteed in butter, a Capresi-style shrimp salad, crab cakes, and--best of all--crabmeat cannelloni. There is almost always a fight over who gets that last one, which is terrific. The second course broke away from the standard fettuccine Alfredo for which Impastato's is famous. Instead, we had penne pasta arabbiata, a thick red sauce with a substantial red pepper component. "Arabbiata" means "in an angry style." So, high heat making a dense sauce, and all that crushed red pepper. Lots of variety among the entrees, with the pecan-smoked filet mignon leading the list. The pork spiedini is also popular. Where Mr. Joe gets soft-shell crabs this time of year I don't know, but they were popular. There is braciolone, and pan-broiled fish with artichokes and mushrooms. Mr. Joe tells me that he has nice trout with crabmeat and a cream sauce. He offered it to me, and I recommended it to some others. The servers for those people knew nothing about the dish. Just another one of those special deals Joe Impastato always has on his menu. I've often said that I like the shared name of his wife and his daughter, both of whom are Mica, pronounced "meek-ah." I should have noticed this before, but Mr. Joe told me as I interviewed him for the radio that the name was a one-letter contraction of "amica"--friend, female. That makes the name sound better still.

Impastato Cellars. Madisonville: 240 Highway 22 E. 985-845-4445.