Monday, January 4, 2016.
Beans And Fried Chicken: What New Orleans Is Made
Of.
This morning I took a look at what the weather would be like during my visit to son Jude, daughter-in-law Suzanne, and grandson Jackson in Los Angeles. I was taken aback by forecasts for inches of rain and feet of snow, along with forty-ish high temperatures, mudslides, and floods. These conditions will begin the moment my flight arrives in LAX, and will end the day I fly back out again. I cancel the trip. Driving in L.A. is bad enough when it's warm and sunny for me to look forward to doing it in floods and snow. I'm also wary of flight cancellations and other inconveniences.
Jude, who has been eager to introduce Jackson to me, is disappointed but understanding. He is working on a new project and can't chauffeur me around anyway. Then I learn that Jackson's christening will be next month, and I'll certainly be there for that.
I feared that Mary Ann would disapprove of my shrinking away. In fact, she's happy to hear about it, since it allows her to drive up to Virginia with another load of Mary Leigh's stuff. ML and her fiance moved up there a couple of months ago, but you'd never know it to look at her room here at the ranch.
We have lunch at the Camellia Café, which on Mondays has a small buffet of fried chicken (made only a few pieces at a time, to work around the problems of fried foods on steam tables). I don't get the chicken, but I do like the red beans here. And red beans actually improve in flavor as they sit for a couple of hours in the gentle heat of the bain-marie. Indeed, the beans were unusually good today, as was the bread pudding. Fourteen bucks apiece. Filled the house, but an all-you-can-eat offer has to be really terrible to fail.
The radio show rolls right along with lots of good conversation until sunset, when the signal is attenuated. That's the bad news. The good is that the time when that happens moved forward to five-fifteen. Yes! We already have gained fifteen minutes of daylight as we work our way to summer again.
Camellia Cafe. Abita Springs: 69455 LA 59. 985-809-6313.
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Tuesday, January 5, 2016.
I Show Up. Rough Night At Salu.
The predictions of heavy rain, snow, and cold in Los Angeles this week keep climbing up the newscasts. Jude tells me that he is buying sandbags to keep his (really, her) house--which is on an incline--from getting spanked by a flood or a mudslide.
I head into town for the radio show, which is busy off and on, but which attracts more than fifty percent women to our on-air phones. That's unusual, since the rest of WWWL's programming is sports of the detailed kind--which coaches are getting fired, which players are disabled, and the like. That kind of stuff attracts the boys more than the girls. But nothing can be done.
Mary Ann has come into town to hang out with one of her friends, but she saves time for me and dinner. I suggest Salu, where I have not been in some time. It was about two-thirds full, but that's not very good for them, since a lot of their customers prefer the sidewalk tables. Too cold for those during this season.
The original idea of Salu was to be a modified tapas restaurant. Not just with little plates, but with Spanish cooking. The Spanish aspect is now limited to a few small dishes and paella. The major specialty is mussels, which can't really be pinned down to one country. I've had many different versions of mussels here, all of them good.
Wish I had ordered them today. After a starter round of fried artichoke hearts and tomato-basil soup--both pretty good--we are faced with disappointment. Prawns (a useless word, because no two people agree on what is a prawn and what is a shrimp) wrapped in bacon are uninteresting. Chicken stuffed with stuffing (that's as far as I could distinguish by taste alone) is tough as breast meat goes, and no great shakes in terms of flavor.
I thought MA would like the short ribs risotto. She found the sauce sweet--something she is sensitive to and hates. I would add that the risotto was much undercooked. I end this eating with a hard bread pudding topped with ice cream that was somehow gooey.
My guess: the top kitchen staff is catching up with off-days after a busy holiday season. This is not the restaurant I remember from previous visits.
Across the room from us is a man I would estimate as about forty. He looks exactly the way I did at that age. I am tempted to go over there to tell him this, and suggest that he take a good look at me for a glimpse of his future. Mary Ann says this is a very bad idea, especially since the guy is with a date. So I let it be.
Salú. Uptown: 3226 Magazine St. 504-371-5809.
The predictions of heavy rain, snow, and cold in Los Angeles this week keep climbing up the newscasts. Jude tells me that he is buying sandbags to keep his (really, her) house--which is on an incline--from getting spanked by a flood or a mudslide.
I head into town for the radio show, which is busy off and on, but which attracts more than fifty percent women to our on-air phones. That's unusual, since the rest of WWWL's programming is sports of the detailed kind--which coaches are getting fired, which players are disabled, and the like. That kind of stuff attracts the boys more than the girls. But nothing can be done.
Mary Ann has come into town to hang out with one of her friends, but she saves time for me and dinner. I suggest Salu, where I have not been in some time. It was about two-thirds full, but that's not very good for them, since a lot of their customers prefer the sidewalk tables. Too cold for those during this season.
The original idea of Salu was to be a modified tapas restaurant. Not just with little plates, but with Spanish cooking. The Spanish aspect is now limited to a few small dishes and paella. The major specialty is mussels, which can't really be pinned down to one country. I've had many different versions of mussels here, all of them good.
Wish I had ordered them today. After a starter round of fried artichoke hearts and tomato-basil soup--both pretty good--we are faced with disappointment. Prawns (a useless word, because no two people agree on what is a prawn and what is a shrimp) wrapped in bacon are uninteresting. Chicken stuffed with stuffing (that's as far as I could distinguish by taste alone) is tough as breast meat goes, and no great shakes in terms of flavor.
I thought MA would like the short ribs risotto. She found the sauce sweet--something she is sensitive to and hates. I would add that the risotto was much undercooked. I end this eating with a hard bread pudding topped with ice cream that was somehow gooey.
My guess: the top kitchen staff is catching up with off-days after a busy holiday season. This is not the restaurant I remember from previous visits.
Across the room from us is a man I would estimate as about forty. He looks exactly the way I did at that age. I am tempted to go over there to tell him this, and suggest that he take a good look at me for a glimpse of his future. Mary Ann says this is a very bad idea, especially since the guy is with a date. So I let it be.
