Wednesday, November 25, 2015.
A Sparseness Of Hospitality.
If I don't show up at the radio station offices at least once this week, it will be noticed. Not that I have anything to do over there other than the show--which I can just as easily get done at home. But I'm getting a lot of mail from my fellow employees about my becoming a grandfather, and everyone I bump into in the halls, including people I don't really know, says something nice.
But where will I have supper? I will be home alone tonight. I remember times like this when I was in my twenties, and, reliant on restaurants as I am, I would show up in many a nearly-empty room. Who goes out to eat grandly on the day before Thanksgiving? Then and now, not many.
My first idea was to walk across Poydras Street to Le Meridien Hotel, which rebranded itself about a year ago from the W. They made a fuss about their restaurant, cleverly named LMNO (figure it out). Their initial menu had a bizarre concept, one in which you build a meal out of four differenlty-sized courses. It struck me as touristy and expensive. But I think I'll try it tonight, because a) it's been open long enough to have its act together and 2) I recall coming here when it was the W's Zoe. I recall a strange, cartoonish light show by the bar.
But that bar is gone. The dining room that was part of it is not only dark, but the street entrance to it was locked tight save for those with room cards. A more accessible bar had a few people, some of whom seemed regulars. So much for dinner tonight in this place.
I re-cross Poydras and head up Tchoupitoulas. I recall the days when I worked and lived around here. In the late 1970s, there was nothing where all these restaurants and hotels and condos are now.
I sit down at Compére Lapin, after asking the hostess for a table with enough light for me to read by. She brings me to a table so dark that I can't read the menu, let alone a magazine. It occurs to me that I have already written the review of this place. (I liked it.) Onward.
I turn up at Cava. Haven't been to Danny Millan's sophisticated Lakeview bistro in awhile. The place is doing very well, he says, and is now open seven nights, an increase from five. He's doing a lot of outside catering. Most of the customers are happy regulars who lean in an upscale direction. He has a few wines he wants me to try. I show him some photos of just-born Jackson Fitzmorris. Danny is impressed.
The waiter says that if he were me he'd start with the tomato and meatball soup of the day. I had this some months ago and loved it. It's evven better now, with an intense tomato flavor with a good deal of pepper. The meatballs are overcooked but so small that this doesn't bring them down.
[caption id="attachment_49703" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crabmeat, avocado and tomato salad @ Cava.[/caption]
Now a salad of avocados, baby greens, tomatoes, and Mr. Higgin's lump crabmeat. This is more than I needed to eat, but it could not be resisted.
[caption id="attachment_49702" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Red grouper with a pepper butter sauce @ Cava.[/caption]
The entree is a slab of red grouper. I can't say I recall eating that species before. The sauce and garnishes are a seemingly random collection of the items we scatter on our fish dishes around here, although one part of it is unique: a glowing orange butter sauce that got that color from a puree of peppers, if I understood the waiter right.
[caption id="attachment_49701" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bread pudding with a modest, simple sauce.[/caption]
It's a longer dinner than I expect, but Danny always has a lot to say. I finally cut loose at nine, because I had to. One of the people I encountered in the radio station's halls was Kristian Garic and T-Bob Hebert's, who want me to come on their WWL sports show at ten-twenty tonight to talk food. Even sports takes a break when the prospect of Thanksgiving dinner looms.
My arrival tonight at the Cool Water Ranch marks twenty-five years since Mary Ann, Jude and I moved from Mid-City to our new home near Abita Springs. (Mary Leigh had not yet been born.) That was nearly as great a change in my life as any other. Now I can't imagine ever leaving here unless I have to.
Thursday, November 26, 2015.
Thanksgiving.
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Cava. Lakeview: 789 Harrison Ave. 504-304-9034.
For many years before Mary Ann and I were married and I gained a free ticket for Thanksgiving dinner at her parents' house, I was a guest at the so-called Waifs and Orphans dinner at Kit and Billy Wohl's apartment in the Garden District. The guests were people who were largely from out of town and in the media. Kit and Billy were in the public relations business, and the combination was perfect. I have been asked more than a few times why I didn't have Thanksgiving at my big sister Judy's house, with my other two sisters and all the nephews and nieces. I have no good answer. Some of the bad answers I can think of are insensitivity, selfishness, and a penchant for solo living.
It's been twenty-seven years since I had a Thanksgiving like that. But the Marys and Jude are clustered around the newborn baby, and there is no room for me. Mary Ann will stretch this out to the maximum. Somebody has to hold down a job, and that's my lookout.
I am invited to the home of Desiree Billeaud, extended by her former, Chuck. Their daughters and our daughter were longtime friends, and they collectively are almost family to us. Lots of extended Billeaud and Taylor family is here, along with three turkeys, boudin brought by Chuck (a Cajun from Broussard) some fifteen vegetable casseroles (all very good, particularly the green bean and artichoke). Seven or eight homemade pies for dessert. Very nice of them to think of me.
But I miss, with some pain, the Thanksgiving dinners we hosted at the Cool Water Ranch, after Mary Ann's parents retired from the job. We started with around thirty-five guests in 1994, and peaked a few years later with over fifty. It was the happiest of times, captured by Mary Leigh's frequent assessment: "Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, even better than Christmas!" Then all the little kids grew up, and three years ago we found ourselves as a nuclear foursome for Thanksgiving, and that was that.
What a waste of a great place for this feast! I walked around the Ranch, with its many trees changing colors, temperate weather, and a new heir to the manor now established. If only everybody else felt the same way I do!
Crabmeat, avocado and tomato salad @ Cava.[/caption]
Now a salad of avocados, baby greens, tomatoes, and Mr. Higgin's lump crabmeat. This is more than I needed to eat, but it could not be resisted.
[caption id="attachment_49702" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Red grouper with a pepper butter sauce @ Cava.[/caption]
The entree is a slab of red grouper. I can't say I recall eating that species before. The sauce and garnishes are a seemingly random collection of the items we scatter on our fish dishes around here, although one part of it is unique: a glowing orange butter sauce that got that color from a puree of peppers, if I understood the waiter right.
[caption id="attachment_49701" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bread pudding with a modest, simple sauce.[/caption]
It's a longer dinner than I expect, but Danny always has a lot to say. I finally cut loose at nine, because I had to. One of the people I encountered in the radio station's halls was Kristian Garic and T-Bob Hebert's, who want me to come on their WWL sports show at ten-twenty tonight to talk food. Even sports takes a break when the prospect of Thanksgiving dinner looms.
My arrival tonight at the Cool Water Ranch marks twenty-five years since Mary Ann, Jude and I moved from Mid-City to our new home near Abita Springs. (Mary Leigh had not yet been born.) That was nearly as great a change in my life as any other. Now I can't imagine ever leaving here unless I have to.
