Diary 11|3, 4|2014: Blue Line At Courthouse. Food Expo.

[title type="h5"]Monday, November 3, 2014. Petit Juror. Blue Line Bistro. [/title] I begin jury duty at the St. Tammany Courthouse. It's six years since the last time I was called. Many are called, but few are chosen. I wasn't last time, nor the time before that. Come to think of it, I haven't been empaneled since 1975. About two hundred people are in the pool. One trials' worth of people are selected at random and head off to a courtroom. I sit there, writing and trying to keep my phone and laptop charged by pulling my chair into an irregular spot near a wall outlet. We get the opportunity to beg off service to one of the judges. I tell him about my remote broadcast tomorrow in downtown New Orleans, arranged months ago. Considering that tomorrow is Election Day and that only one trial will be in session, his honor was happy to grant my request. He also says that he listens to the radio show. We are told to go to lunch. The lady who is managing things gives us a comprehensive guide to the restaurants in the neighborhood. She has both opinions and facts. She knows, for instance, which restaurants are closed on Monday. Say! I could use someone like that for the website. I mention this to her, and she says that she is well aware of who I am and what I do for a living, but likes her present gig. I decide to try the Blue Line Bistro. It's a couple of blocks from the courthouse, in a renovated house that more recently was the Cheesesteak Bistro. I've heard good things about Blue Line, and it seemed the kind of place that would serve a good plate of red beans and rice , it being Monday. En route, I get into a conversation with three other not-quite-jurors. We wind up sharing a table. One of them is in the sausage business, and worked for the company that packages foodstuffs for Popeyes and Copeland's before that. Another is a Drama professor at UNO. But I am a graduate of that very program! We compare notes on the department then and now. We go through a lot of red beans. My bowlful is topped with a patty of hot sausage that I had to talk the server into swapping for the smoked sausage. We fill almost all the time allotted to lunch--about an hour and a half--and must strut emphatically to return to our limbo room on time. Another group of potential jurors is rounded up and taken to a courtroom. I remain untouched. After another hour, we are dismissed for the day, and told to call a special number tomorrow evening to find out what to do next. That's not early enough for me to give any radio show. Mary Ann sits in for me, with the assistance of Daniel, the Gourmet Cellist. He's in his mid-twenties, which impresses Mary Ann mightily. This could be because our son Jude is the same age and equally accomplished in his own pursuits. She has a motherly appreciation of sharp-minded men that age. Daniel is not only is he a classically-trained member of the string section of the Louisiana Philharmonic, but a sophisticated conversationalist, too. Between the two of them, they even dispatch most of the live commercials. In the coming days, my listeners will say that they wish Mary Ann were on more often. What are the implications of that. The Northside Performing Arts Society breaks out into voice parts tonight to run songs for the upcoming holiday performances. I came into the organization when some of these songs were well learned by the chorus. There are parts of it I am just beginning to pick up, but without many other tenors for me to tune into, it is rough sledding. I find myself woodshedding some of the passages. I depart this evening a little discouraged, but that's how it always is at the beginning. I wish I could play the piano. [title type="h5"]Blue Line Bistro. Covington: 528 N. Columbia St. 985-302-5030. [/title][divider type=""] [title type="h5"]Tuesday, November 4, 2014. A Look In Back Of The Food Curtain. [/title] I can't remember where I heard it first, but I knew immediately what "one-truck restaurant" means. A restaurant that's more concerned with maximizing profits and minimizing labor while giving less attention to the excellence of their food can indeed buy all the food it needs to function from a single company. One truck brings the flour, steaks, pizza, broccoli, ice cream, bagels, lemons, coffee, catfish, butter, pasta, barbecue sauce, finished soups and sauces, chicken fingers, salmon, ketchup, beef stock, banana cream pie, and everything else edible and drinkable except for alcoholic beverages. Performance Food Services, a national company along those lines, bought into the New Orleans market some years ago. Every year, they hold an expo to showcase its lines of products, attended by restaurateurs, caterers, school cafeteria managers, and the food buyers for every other kind of food service company restaurants. I first became acquainted with the outfit when they asked me to speak a meeting some years ago. Last year I did a radio show from their expo, and they invited me back again. I don't attend events like this often. I write for final consumers, not restaurant operators. And I see quite a lot of food designed for restaurants where they're not exactly going after their fifth star. As well as things like brooms and mopheads, bookkeeping systems, packaging, and other background goods. [caption id="attachment_45328" align="alignnone" width="480"] Braveheart veal chop.[/caption] But I learn about other things, too. Performance has a line of first-class fresh meats under the Braveheart brand. Very impressive. They were cooking up chops and whole loins right there, and had to come back for more. "All our cattle go through DNA testing so we can guarantee that it is really Black Angus beef, usually to about ninety-five percent," one of their meat guys told me. That's good to know, in a time when supermarkets are being coy about the provenance of their beef. [caption id="attachment_45329" align="alignnone" width="480"] Makings of a mini-muffuletta.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_45327" align="alignright" width="251"] Tower of hambuger: 12 stories.[/caption]Some of the suppliers are very local. Mrs. Wheat's descendants were there with not just their famous spicy meat pies and a few new pies--notably one along the lines of crab rangoon. Another seller literally put all his boudin balls in one basket. A surprise visitor among the many chefs who stopped in was Leon Ricard, who has the dubious honor of being the subject of my very first restaurant review in 1972. I run into him only occasionally, and it's been awhile. I eat enough samples at the expo to leave me utterly without hunger for the rest of the day. I walk over to the radio station to take care of a few loose ends. And I call the courthouse to get my marching orders for jury duty. I am told that I am not needed on the morrow. Great! The damage to my week is minimal so far.