[title type="h5"]Tuesday, December 16, 2014.
Eat Club Returns To Brennan's After Five Years.
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When the Eat Club was in its early years, Brennan's invited us to stage one of our dinners there. They put the twenty or so of us in the Gold Room on the second floor--a space noteworthy for its having a gasolier, a chandelier fired by natural gas. Their Reveillon dinner was so fine that we resolved to return to Brennan's the following year. That became an annual tradition and a black-tie, deluxe affair, and filled the dining room next to the wine cellar every year for about a decade.
In 2009, the Brennans told us that they couldn't handle our dinner anymore. They didn't say why, but they were giving us a good price. I assumed that they had better customers waiting for that space.
In exile, the dinner moved first to Arnaud's, which was great. Then we went to Le Foret, where then-manager Danny Millan made such a spectacular deal for us that we went back for the next three years.
We would probably have gone there again this year. But Brennan's came back. The upheaval that brought the business to bankruptcy and took Pip and Ted Brennan out of the restaurant was followed by a reported $20 million renovation as new owners took over Brennan's.
In November, I got the word that the new Brennan's would be open in time for this Reveillon season. During a tour given to my by Ralph Brennan--one of the two major partners in the place--I asked whether they'd be interested in having the Eat Club back. Indeed, they were eager. I set the bar high: $150 inclusive to knock us out.
[caption id="attachment_45969" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Eat Club holiday gala in the Pineapple Room at Brennan's. [/caption]
The dinner is everything we hoped for. But one is on thin ice in newly opened (or reopened) restaurants. We are not looking at a fully-ripe tomato here. For starters, our group of fifty-six people makes up the entire patronage of Brennan's this night. In the early going, they were closed for dinner Monday and Tuesdays for dinner. (That gap has since been filled.) We could use the extra space. The Pineapple Room on the second floor is a little crowded. (A few extra people showed up.)
So much for irregularities. The kitchen, having only us to serve, turns out a spectacular dinner. The servers are polite and efficient but a little stiff. Anything we ask for we get, however. The wines flow freely.
[caption id="attachment_45968" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Roasted oysters at Brennan's.[/caption]
We begin with roasted oysters on the half shell. Not Rockefeller, Bienville or casino, and certainly not oysters Roffignac--an ancient Brennan specialty now barely remembered. (Few antique dishes are on the new Brennan's menu.) These are topped with a great sauce of smoked chili butter with chives and Manchego cheese. The French bubbly (Monmart--not an authentic Champagne, but good anyway) is nice with that.
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Egg Sardou.[/caption]
A running theme in our past Eat Club galas here was to serve one of Brennan's egg dishes. Sardou is the most popular, and here it is, made with a deep-orange-yolked poached egg, standing up like a golf ball. The creamed spinach is a bit different from what the old kitchen made, and what used to be hollandaise is now sauce Choron--hollandaise touched with a little tomato. It is very good.
The egg comes with a Pinot Grigio from way up in the northern mountains of Italy from Tiefenbrunner. Few of us had finished it before the next wine arrived--this one a Sancerre from Domaine Vincent Delaporte, in the Loire Valley, and the best white wine of the night.
The wine almost doesn't matter given content of the next course: a salad of curly white endives with pears, pecans, blue cheese, and a transparent dressing. It starts slow and gets good quickly.
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Veal sweetbreads atop black truffle grits.[/caption]
Now comes the evidence that Chef Slade Rushing is in the kitchen. Slade and his wife operated the five-star MiLa for the past five years or so. She decided to become a full-time mommy (applause!) when Slade got the Brennan's gig. A specialty at MiLa was black truffle grits, a union of one of the most expensive ingredients in the world with one of the cheapest. And here it is at Brennan's, underneath pan-roasted veal sweetbreads. Fantastic.
We enter the red Burgundy wine world with Chateau de la Greffiere 2011. Nice.
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Nouvelle steak Diane.[/caption]
The gears change for the main. It's steak Diane, a popular dish in the 1960s and 1970s, and still on Brennan's menu when it closed last year. Chef Slade's version is made not with the usual reduction of Worcestershire sauce, but with mushrooms and brandy. The steak is cut generously, and grilled to a char. This we eat with a reserve Malbec (there's a term I never expected to see), from Argentina.
So far, no disapproval emanates from the Eat Clubbers. But a few of them are now miffed that we don't have bananas Foster for dessert, instead of the chocolate doberge, regardless of the latter's quality. I guess that would have made sense, but on the other hand, how many times have we encountered bananas Foster around town? I had it only six days ago.
Banquet food rarely tells us much about what a restaurant will deliver to the table in an a la carte situation. I certainly can't base a review or rating on this double-size dinner. But here's what can't be gainsaid about the new Brennan's at this too-soon stage:
1. It's beautiful. Some will be upset because favorite rooms and tables no longer exist. On the other hand, for the first time passers-by can look into the dining room and kitchen, perhaps to get excited by what they see. The courtyard is open for anything you want, and the bar is much more comfortable than the old one.
B. The dishes of the past, regardless of their fame, are sparsely represented in the new Brennan's kitchen. Even old standards that made the cut are different from what they were (as in the steak Diane above).
iii. The entire staff is, I'd estimate, half to two-thirds the age of the old pros that formerly walked within these walls. That has its pluses and minuses, and is something we will have to get used to.
Four. The menu prices are actually a bit lower than they were two years ago. On the other hand, I suspect that the day of gigantic fillets of trout with a half-cup of jumbo lump crabmeat on top may be over.
e. It is a tremendous plus to the New Orleans community (and the Eat Club) for Brennan's to be back.
[title type="h5"]Brennan's. French Quarter: 417 Royal. 504-525-9711. [/title]
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[title type="h5"]Wednesday, December 17, 2014.
Forty Years Ago At The Bon-Ton, And Once More Tonight.
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I don't remember the exact date, but I do know that one cold, windy night in December, 1974, I exited my Gravier Street office at around eight in the evening. I was in my third month as editor of New Orleans Magazine, and working long hours to remake it. Few other people were on the streets. None of the hotels that now keep the CBD part of Magazine Street busy were there. Paper swirled around in the wind. I had six blocks to walk to my car. The surroundings were bleak.
En route, I passed in front of the Bon-Ton Café. The magazine's owner, Joe David III, liked to eat in the Bon Ton, and he and I often did. Tonight it looked exceptionally warm and comfy. I aimed my steps between the gaslights on either side of the door and entered.
I don't remember what I ate or who (if anyone) I spoke with. I only recall how wonderful a refuge the Bon Ton was that night, on many levels.
A few years ago that memory floated up to the top of my consciousness. It was another cold, windy night. The Bon Ton is across Poydras Street from the radio station, where at eight o'clock I'd just signed off. It seemed the perfect time to take advantage of the invitation from those same two flickering gaslights. I found a warm deuce. It was next to the bathroom door, but I was alone and it didn't matter. I had dinner and reminisced about those very early days of my career, how far I had come, and how far I might go.
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Bon Ton dining room at Christmastime.[/caption]
The routine was so pleasant that it has become an Advent ritual for me. Last year, for the first time, Mary Ann came with me. She called this afternoon, not knowing about this trap, and I persueded her to join me again in my reverie. She thinks my re-enactments of episodes from my past are as risible as they are boring. But I think I may have her liking that warm, old-fashioned place. I think we'll be back for all the years we have left together.
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Oysters Alvin at the Bon Ton.[/caption]
The easiest part of the program is getting the same kind of food I did in 1974. One can order anything here, and find that it was also in the menu forty years ago. Tonight, we start with oysters Alvin (fried, then wet down with a sauce somewhere between a meuniere and a demi-glace). Then soft-shell crab for me and redfish Bon Ton (topped with crabmeat in a paprika-reddened butter sauce). I eat bread pudding, because that's almost the law here. We talk with Wayne Pierce and his wife Debbie, who we also know through the Jesuit High School channel (their son went there, too). They want to know about Jude's wedding and the food we had. We tell them.
[title type="h5"]Bon Ton Cafe. CBD: 401 Magazine. 504-524-3386.[/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris December 29, 2014 13:01 in
