Tuesday, November 10, 2015.
New Menu At Ralph's On The Park. Toussaint Checks Out.
The accolades Allen Toussaint deserves were offered up in full measure by the media today after he died of a heart attack while on tour in Spain. Although he was a soft-spoken man who never touted his own talents very much, it is generally agreed that only Louis Armstrong topped him in his influence on New Orleans musicians. The number of songs he composed and arrangements he wrote are unmatched in his field. New Orleans music would not be the same without him. Ask the Neville Brothers, Irma Thomas, or any other local hitmaker.
I knew him a little bit, mostly because Toussaint and I had the same dermatologist--Dr. Bob deBellevue, who was close enough a friend that Toussaint played at Dr. Bob's birthday parties. I interviewed Toussaint fir a few articles back in my Figaro days. When I asked after his preferences in wine, I learned that he had a taste for Taittinger Champagne. What about spirits? I asked. "Well, there's the Holy Spirit," he said. Amen.
Every time I was where he was, I came away with two impressions. First, nobody in the business dressed with more style than he did. The most beautiful suits--jacket and tie all the time--rose above his trademark sandals.
And then there was that night when the main act for a concert at the Contemporary Arts Center showed up drunk, then passed out. Toussaint helped the man (who had a few hits over the years with Toussaint's music) to get onto his feet and pointed in the direction home. Then Toussaint--not on the schedule for that night--played the piano for an hour. I could have listened to two or three more hours of his just noodling around on the keyboard. What a man he was!
Completely by coincidence, I have dinner at a table adjacent to a piano, an actual pianist playing it. The restaurant is on my mind for dinner, only because it's been a good while since my most recent time. The regular pianist in Ralph's bar is Joe Krown, but he had the night off. The pianist tonight is playing for a table of four, all of whom seems to have a taste for the Great American Songbook. One of them was clearly a musician--he kept calling out chords as the keyboardist played them. A friend who was at the bar said that a lot of people were having a few drinks accompanied by music around town, in memory of Allen Toussaint.
The young woman server was excited about the culinary offerings tonight. She said that a new menu had just been installed. Wonderful! My usual luck when a menu changes is to be in the restaurant on the last day of the old menu, making all of what I learn useless.
I begin with turtle soup. All of the Brennan restaurants serve that, because of the rightly-accorded fame of the recipe at Commander's Palace. But no two of the Brennan family places make the soup exactly the same way. This one, with a dark color and leafier spinach than typical, is the most offbeat I've had in awhile, Good, though.
The waitress touted me on some fried oysters, sitting on blobs of white remoulade sauce, and topped with tomato jam. The flavor is okay, but these oysters--like most of the others I've had during the past couple of weeks--are too small for any cooked dish. Poor boys or oyster stews are all that these little guys are good for right now. They'll come around as the weather cools.
As if to make up for this (on their own initiative; I made no complaint about the oysters), the kitchen sends out an appetizer-size portion of sauteed flounder with a buttery sauce. That was, indeed, the best dish of the night. They were accompanied by something I haven't encountered in a long time: pommes dauphine. These look like soufflee potatoes, but they're not hollow. Nor are they stuffed. Cooked potatoes are mashed, then enriched with a bit of egg and a little cream, then fried. This used to come with every single entree at LeRuth's, which set the permanent standard.
I finish off with some big grilled asparagus giving a vegetarian cast to my menu of the night. The server recommends a chocolate and hazelnut tart with satsumas. Since my adoption of the cat Satsuma, I grab every satsuma that comes my way. But this was a failure. The citrus segments were actually salty, to the point of being inedible.
The music appreciation society at the next table broke up. I have similar tastes to theirs, but I didn't want to muscle into their requests. Although I might have if the pianist had played a song I know well. He didn't. But it was a nice way to spend an evening.
If only Mary Ann liked music!
Ralph's On The Park. City Park Area: 900 City Park Ave. 504-488-1000.
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Wednesday, November 11, 2015.
First Taste Of Araña. Trivia And Hot Dogs.
The Marys involved me in their plans for the night, which probably means that they will be leaving town in the next day or two. They want to have dinner at Araña Tacqueria y Cantina, a hot Mexican restaurant that opened earlier this year, next to the Bulldog Tavern. That places it in the center of what may be the most concentrated restaurant cluster in the city. Let's make a list of the restaurants on Magazine Street, two blocks in each direction from Amici:
Amici
Basin Seafood
Bulldog
Dat Dog
GG's Dine-ORama
Ignatius
Joey K's
Jung's Golden Dragon
Reginelli's
Rum House
Salu
Slim Goodie's
Smashburger
No wonder it's so hard to park around there!
Araña means "spider," and the decor matches this with a lot of Day Of The Dead Mexican iconography. It opened with a big splash, a statement from the chef as to the authenticity of the flavors, and large crowds. It's still very busy, but in a time in which Mizado and Johnny Sanchez lead the Mexican Hipness League, I must say I wasn't exactly blown away.
The Marys (seated at a sidewalk table, of course) had run through orders of queso fundido, guacamole, and street tacos by the time I arrived. The young, bearded man who was waiting on the table seemed not even slightly put out by the Mary's helter-skelter ordering techniques, which so far consisted of one dish at a time paired with a lot of water.
"What should I drink?" I ask the waiter, who calls me "Brother" all night. (I never had a brother, so it sounded pleasantly peculiar.) He describes a margarita made with pineapple and jalapeno peppers. I'm not a margarita guy, but this sounded good and was. Even the Marys liked it, and neither of them drink much more than the occasional beer.
[caption id="attachment_49559" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Chicken with mole at Arana.[/caption]
My food focus went straight to the first item in the entree section: chicken with molé. Molé is my second-favorite sauce after bearnaise. This version wasn't bad, but it would make other people wonder why molé thrills me so. The complexity--and that's the essence of the stuff--was not there. And while I eat many dishes with high chile-pepper components, that flavor doesn't belong in everything, and in this case it was too much pepper.
ML had a plate of tostadas with pulled pork, which was good. MA ate nothing, which somehow cancels out the many appetizers she had before I arrived.
After dinner, the Marys joined MA's brother Tim Connell and his daughter Hillary. She will be ML's maid of honor next September, a high point in a wonderful friendship that goes back to when the two were little girls. Brings tears to my eyes to think about it.
We meet Tim and Hillery at Dat Dog, where there's a weekly trivia contest. The girls are in the habit of participating in it. What decade was the first for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? I didn't know, so I went home.
Araña Taqueria y Cantina. Uptown 2: Washington To Napoleon: 3242 Magazine St. 504-894-1233.
The Marys (seated at a sidewalk table, of course) had run through orders of queso fundido, guacamole, and street tacos by the time I arrived. The young, bearded man who was waiting on the table seemed not even slightly put out by the Mary's helter-skelter ordering techniques, which so far consisted of one dish at a time paired with a lot of water.
"What should I drink?" I ask the waiter, who calls me "Brother" all night. (I never had a brother, so it sounded pleasantly peculiar.) He describes a margarita made with pineapple and jalapeno peppers. I'm not a margarita guy, but this sounded good and was. Even the Marys liked it, and neither of them drink much more than the occasional beer.
[caption id="attachment_49559" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Chicken with mole at Arana.[/caption]
My food focus went straight to the first item in the entree section: chicken with molé. Molé is my second-favorite sauce after bearnaise. This version wasn't bad, but it would make other people wonder why molé thrills me so. The complexity--and that's the essence of the stuff--was not there. And while I eat many dishes with high chile-pepper components, that flavor doesn't belong in everything, and in this case it was too much pepper.
ML had a plate of tostadas with pulled pork, which was good. MA ate nothing, which somehow cancels out the many appetizers she had before I arrived.
After dinner, the Marys joined MA's brother Tim Connell and his daughter Hillary. She will be ML's maid of honor next September, a high point in a wonderful friendship that goes back to when the two were little girls. Brings tears to my eyes to think about it.
We meet Tim and Hillery at Dat Dog, where there's a weekly trivia contest. The girls are in the habit of participating in it. What decade was the first for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? I didn't know, so I went home.
