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Friday, January 29, 2016.
Avoiding Parades To Eat At Filippo.
Last year on the second Friday before Mardi Gras, while looking for a place for the Marys and I to celebrate my birthday, we became hopelessly entangled in traffic. Veterans Boulevard and West Esplanade were jammed for miles, as we discovered after failing to procure a table at either Austin's or Vincent's. We got caught again on the North Shore, which had its own parade. We wound up at a jam-packed Keith Young's Steak House at around nine. Everybody was in a state of malcontent by now, with grumblings from the girls as to whether I even deserved a birthday after all this.
They may be right. Heading home today, I got caught in exactly the same mess as last year. And the same failure to get a table in the same restaurants. How dumb can I be? The only thing good about it was a striking vista of headlights on West Esplanade from Causeway Boulevard all the way back past Transcontinental. Seeing that was not only dazzling, but it inspired a way out, and gave me a good place to dine. I would drive down Transcontinental to West Napoleon, and take that to Ristorante Filippo, just past Causeway. I was there only a few weeks ago, but there's enough good stuff on the menu to make me happy. I began with an artichoke-and-spinach soup, then the good house salad, culminating in a spectacularly fine double-cut pork chop.
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Pork chop at Ristorante Filippo.[/caption]
Again and again, I find that the good pork chops that come my way are better than the best steaks. In this case, the steak was the $60 job at Ruth's Chris two nights ago. Chef Phil Gagliano's pork chop was two or three times as good, at less than half the price. Topped with barely-warm spinach (as much a salad as it was a vegetable side), the chop sat in a slosh of brown bordelaise sauce with a good bit of pepper and garlic.
Driving the rest of the way home was easy, even though the North Shore parade was in motion. One false turn would have had me stuck in the second line. But my heading remained true.
Saturday, January 30, 2016.
The Best New Salad Dressing. The Worst Movie.
The new date for my first meeing with my grandson Jackson has been fixed. I will fly to Los Angeles the day after the Eat Club dinner at Café Giovanni. I'll stay the three weekend nights with Jackson, Jude and Suzanne. Return Monday. Weekends are the only way to play it, because Jude has two full-time jobs these days. He is in demand. But no matter where we are, that place is dictated by the needs of Jackson, who is very mellow as nine-week-old babies go.
Mary Ann did all the flight bookings through Priceline. As always, she has razor-sharp boarding times. I hope I don't get left behind in Dallas.
Lot of errands this morning. The first is to get a haircut. But the online gizmo used by the Lion's Den in Covington doesn't appear to be working. When I go in person, the owner says she's booked for this morning, but that I can get my do next Saturday.
I decided on the train trip six months ago that I must trash the suitcase I have been using for ten or fifteen years--the one that won't stand up anymore. I buy a new one today. It's a London Fog. I didn't know they made suitcases. I do remember that the first really heavy coat I owned as an adult was a London Fog. A friend of mine said it was the only way to go. I used it once, back in 1967, and left it somewhere in New York City, never to be seen again. Whenever I try to be stylish, I blow it. It's only the crappy things that I never lose. Like that old suitcase, for instance.
Mary Ann meets me at La Caretta in Mandeville, where we each get a bowl of the wonderful bean soup. She gets a beef taco and I have the baby romaine salad with avocados, tomatoes and the restaurant's excellent cilantro vinaigrette. This salad could be served in the most expensive restaurants in town without disappointment. If it were, it would be one-fifth the size of this one.
Mid-afternoon I have a ninety-minute radio show on WWL. Many callers continue to note major New Orleans streets on which there are no restaurants. So far, the only ones are Wisner Blvd., Marconi Drive, De Saix Avenue, and Moss Street. Fontainebleau Dr. is mentioned--but there's a new Mexican restaurant at the spot where Fontainebleau becomes South Broad. Close enough.
MA and I go to the Movie Tavern, where they serve credible (barely) food while you watch the movie. This happens more smoothly than I would guess. Neither of us is hungry, but we get a pizza. It has just arrived when we decide that we can't stand watching another minute of "Dirty Grandpa." We know from the name that it will be a series of lewd gags. But we figure that having Robert De Niro in a leading role would keep a lid on it. Wrong! This may be the most offensive movie I've ever seen. It's probably doing well in the adolescent-college-male demographic. But we are done with it twenty minutes in. MA insisted on a refund on the tickets. To my amazement, she got it.
Movie Tavern. Covington: 201 N Hwy 190. 214-751-8277.
Pork chop at Ristorante Filippo.[/caption]
Again and again, I find that the good pork chops that come my way are better than the best steaks. In this case, the steak was the $60 job at Ruth's Chris two nights ago. Chef Phil Gagliano's pork chop was two or three times as good, at less than half the price. Topped with barely-warm spinach (as much a salad as it was a vegetable side), the chop sat in a slosh of brown bordelaise sauce with a good bit of pepper and garlic.
Driving the rest of the way home was easy, even though the North Shore parade was in motion. One false turn would have had me stuck in the second line. But my heading remained true.
