Tuesday, October 4, 2016.
Back To Work. Back To Seafood.
I welcome the return to my work routine, which gives me comfort as well as provides an income. But the to-do pile is very deep, and I didn't write nearly enough on the cruise ship. Much of the time at the keyboard went into the writing of the semi-daily newsletter I send to the Eat Clubbers. I am my own paper delivery boy, a bigger job than usual because of the way our people are scattered on all decks, from forward to aft. It took an hour to drop them all off. If there's a next cruise, I might insist that everyone have some way of getting text messages.
I am eager to return to New Orleans seafood. On my way home from the radio station, I stop at Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar in Metairie (in the former Bozo's location). While I was away Ed McIntyre opened the fifth edition of his Oyster Bar concept. This one is on the corner of Bienville and N. Carrollton Avenues, in the space where Pei Wei Asian Diner failed to meet expectations. Pei Wei is a downscale arm of P.F. Chang's, a national chain. It gives me a mild satisfaction to see chains bumped off by local restaurants.
I celebrate with a half-dozen raw oysters, as good now as they were during the Bozo's days. Then a big soft-shell crab with light butter sauce and almonds. Very good. Soft-shells are still running large, owing to the very warm water temperatures in its habitat.
At home, I continue working on the rank of email that piled up during the cruise. It is about 800 messages long, not counting junk. I hope I can get it done before the weekend.
Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar & Fish House. Metairie: 3117 21st St. 504-833-6310.
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Wednesday, October 5, 2016.
The Wrong Side Of Josephine Estelle.
During the past few months the new Ace Hotel has intrigued local diners. The Ace is the home of at least two restaurants on its facing of Carondelet at Lafayette, around back of Gallier Hall. One of them is Seaworthy, a narrow space that goes up three (or perhaps more) stories on the Girod Street side. Dr. Bob DeBellevue and I had dinner there about three weeks ago, but the Dining Diary--in one of its rare neglectful times--has not yet recorded that dinner.
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Dining room at Josephine Estelle[/caption]
While waiting for Dr. Bob that evening, I looked inside the much larger and more obvious Ace Hotel restaurant, Josephine Estelle. The place appeared to be full, especially in the aura of the bar. That facility is close to the large windows, and anyone who walked by would see what appears to be a very hip, happening place to be.
Mary Ann suggested Josephine Estelle (the names are those of two daughters of the owner) for our dinner tonight. It would be our first dinner in over two weeks, so we were ready to splurge in terms both of dollars and calories.
The premises are fascinating. This is the former Barnett's furniture store, built out at a time when lots of people did all their furniture buying in this part of the CBD. The main showroom has ceilings two stories high and supported by large Corinthian columns. Except for the seating arrangement--most of the tables are lined up booth-style--the place has an antique yet grandiose feeling. MA doesn't like the look, which she says is too old-style for her. (She doesn't like Antoine's, Galatoire's, or Arnaud's, for the same reason.)
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Acini di pepe.[/caption]
But there is nothing retro about the menu or the food it suggests. For example, there are not one but two versions of fish crudo: tuna and red snapper. Mary Ann is more impressed by the presence here of the hottest dish in Rome these days: acini de pepe. This is small, short tubes of pasta tossed with a sauce that suggests cream but which is actually parmesan cheese mixing it up with the water from which the pasta came. The whole pile is further tossed with a lot of ground black pepper. It's irresistible, and Josephine Estelle has the flavor exactly nailed. (Having been in Rome and eaten this less than two years ago, I can say that with assurance.)
The rest of the dinner brought forth a salad of beets in several colors, a more conventional salad bearing the restaurant's name, and a fillet of sheepshead, a fish I am always happy to find on a menu.
The Dining Diary has fallen so far behind that a second dinner at Josephione Estelle has lapped the first one. This one was shorter in duration but more expensive. We began with a bowl of freshly-cut French fries, served with a reddish aioli with enough red pepper that we couldn't stop eating them, even though both of us are trying to lighten our eating.
Now the mangrove snapper crudo. The fish is vividly fresh, but the marinade is weak. I tried to fix it with lemon juice and pepper, but that didn't quite get the job of tartness and spice done.
The presence on a menu of a sirloin strip (a.k.a. New York strip steak) used to tell me that a restaurant offering it was actually serious about its beef. The version here is the fourth or seventh or tenth time I have found this tendency violated. What I get is a decidedly tough piece of beef. I'm about to give up on this, my favorite cut--except in major steakhouses. And I'm not so sure about them.
Josephine Estelle. CBD: 600 Carondelet St. 504-930-3070.
