Tuesday, November 1, 2016.
Breakfast For Lunch @ Café Adelaide.
Summer holds on tenaciously at the Cool Water Ranch, where the temperatures insist on getting into the mid-eighties every day. The lawn may need a trim before Thanksgiving. Its growth has slowed, owing to the very scant rain of the last two months, but it's still looking shaggy. On the other hand, our homestead will not see much activity on Turkey Day, so why should I care?
Nancy Jeansonne, who was my radio producer twenty years ago, and whose husband Steve manages Café B in old Metairie, often extolled the pleasures of breakfast for dinner. It's simple enough. Instead of eating a salad, chicken, peas in a roux, a glass of Chianti and a cookie for dinner, you eat waffles, bacon, omelettes and orange juice. Although I never actually tried this idea, it does have its appeal.
So when I heard a radio spot on my show today touting breakfast for dinner at Café Adelaide, I thought I'd cross the street and try it out. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind--the ingredients and flavors were only vaguely breakfasty. But its three courses made a good supper.
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Carrot and ginger soup du jour @ Cafe Adelaide,.[/caption]
Make that four courses. The soup du jour was a spicy, carrot-based potage that sounded good I see it is on the Eat Fit NOLA special menu that Café Adelaide runs with the help of Ochsner Hospital. The serving was very large, but if it's healthy, then why not?
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A cinnamon roll with foie gras.[/caption]
The first dish officially part of the breakfast-for-lunch theme is described as a foie gras roll. The roll part refers to a cinnamon roll, in which all the other ingredients are wrapped: fire-roasted foie gras, hard cider roasted butternut squash, sultanas (white raisins), Crystal spiced pecans, and smoked honey. The foie gras imparts no detectable flavor, but the item is otherwise enjoyable. And filling, easily pumping up the liteness of the soup.
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Swordfish Sardou.[/caption]
The entree is grilled swordfish Sardou. Eggs sardou are and always have been among the most popular brunch and breakfast dishes at Brennan's and its many imitators. (It must be noted that the dish was actually created by Antoine's.) In its standard form, eggs Sardou are poached and served atop creamed spinach and artichoke bottoms, with the eggs and hollandaise on top. This breakfast-for-dinner version has steamed whole-leaf spinach, artichoke hearts, a beautiful and generous slab of grilled sword, with the hollandaise still at the top. Excellent in the eating, this is more an offspring of Sardou than of breakfast.
Two possible desserts come with the $37 breakfast dinner, but instead I have the white chocolate ice cream. What is white chocolate ice cream? A lot like vanilla ice cream, I'd say.
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A slow evening at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]
It's Tuesday, and everybody's at home watching either the disgusting unrolling of the presidential election or the progress of the Cubs toward winning the Series for the first time in over a century. The late New Orleans sportscaster and colleague of mine at the old WGSO, Wayne Mack, would be ecstatic about the latter.
Cafe Adelaide. CBD: 300 Poydras St. 504-595-3305.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016.
Eat Club A La Grecque.
About eight months ago we held an Eat Club dinner at the Acropolis Café. At the time it was the only Greek restaurant in town. (Within a short time Hummus & More brought the population to two.) The first dinner was so good that all the wheels began turning for us to do another dinner there. Someday, I will persuade all concerned that this is not a good idea. Not because there's anything wrong with Acropolis, a terrific Greak taverna. It's just that the audience for our dinners increasingly likes variety. It was not always the case. We went through a period a few years ago in which we were having dinners at Impastato's every two or three months, and packed the house every time. But the Millennials don't go for these reruns.
That said, the dinner we are served tonight is even better than the first one. It begins with grilled Roman artichokes, so tender you could eat them stem and all. (In fact, the stem was the best part.) Then came skordalia, one of my favorite Greek appetizers. It's made of pureed garlic and almonds with a bit of bread to hold it together. I wish I had asked them to make a beet salad and serve it with the skordalia. The two things were made for each other.
Next came a choice of soups--lentil or red snapper bisque. I went for the latter, and thought it was too thick for my tastes, so I just ate less of it.
Three entree items: grilled octopus, cut up into dice small enough that even the squeamish eaters are able to get it down. Then flounder wrapped with phyllo pastry and baked: elegant and mellow. Finally three or four lamb chops, still semi-attached to the racks. Not overcooked. Good brown sauce.
The dish that I most am waiting for is dessert: galaktoboureko. It's phyllo dough layered with custard. It's a lot of work to make, but worth the effort.
All the wines, both red and white, come from Greece. No retsina, though, and am I glad. I've met only one person in my life who actually liked the resin-flavored wine: Attorney Ed Lilly, husband of the late Charlotte Bass, a partner of mine in a typesetting shop in the 1970s.
The turnout was less than great--twenty-five people. (Not that the restaurant can hold a lot more.) I'm sure this is due to the politics and baseball preoccupying the media these days. With Cubs now the world champions, who would have missed the final game in the World Series tonight? That would be me. I haven't watched a baseball game in decades.
Acropolis Cuisine. Metairie: 3841 Veterans Blvd. 504-888-9046.
