Wednesday, December 16, 2015.
The Eat Club Gala Returns Again.
I forgot that we arranged this on purpose, but today is exactly a year since last year's Eat Club Gala at Brennan's. That would be no big deal if everything had been normal. But the 2014 dinner was our return to Brennan's after three years elsewhere. Those three years were evidence that Brennan's was in trouble. By the end of them the restaurant had new owners, an expensive and magnificent restoration, a new chef, a new menu. . . really, everything about the revived Brennan's was the stuff of a brand-new restaurant
And there we were last year, in a new private room on the second floor, eating dishes with the old names but new formulations. Brennan's had, in fact, just reopened. The Eat Club was among the first groups in the place. We were the only diners in there that night, because Brennan's wasn't yet open every day. It felt a little stiff, but we expected that. The excitement of returning to the restaurant after it was closed for a year almost made up for that.
[caption id="attachment_45969" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Last year's Eat Club holiday gala in the Pineapple Room at Brennan's. [/caption]
So here we are, a year later. Same room. Same chef. Many of the same servers. The menu is similar to last year's. Many of tonight's Eat Clubbers were here last year, too. So we get a good reading of the progress Brennan's made in its new era. In brief, the restaurant is much less self-conscious than it was last year. With little experience, last year's service team defaulted to following the rules when in doubt, and it made the place seem a little unfriendly. Nothing could be done about that: hiring 125 experienced servers at the same time is not something any New Orleans restaurant could pull off. This evening the servers were much more cordial, smiled more and said yes to most off-beam requests.
[caption id="attachment_45599" align="alignnone" width="320"]
Brennan's executive chef Slade Rushing.[/caption]
The direction of the kitchen is interesting. The highly innovative executive chef Slade Rushing hews to traditional lines with his cooking, even as he sprinkles the menu liberally with new dishes.
The first course is a good example. In its soul it's crabmeat au gratin. But the chef added finely-chopped cauliflower and a bread crumb topping to the generous crabmeat component. If I were doing this, I think I would have pureed the cauliflower, but Slade's version was at least as good, and we learn that crabmeat and cauliflower are good partners.
Then comes a salad of bibb lettuce, leaves almost as big as the plates. These leaves are soft and good, and topped with shrimp and hearts of palm soaked in a citrus vinaigrette. At the bottom of the stack is a thick green sauce whose components I never found out, but it was so good that I wiped it up (and out) with French bread.
Which reminds me: Brennan's has the classic hot French bread that all restaurants like this used to serve.
Next, we get a single egg Sardou, the most popular entree on Brennan's famous breakfast menu. Poached egg, creamed spinach, hollandaise. It fits perfectly at this point in the dinner.
Course four of the six is a pretty, toasted slab of Gulf grouper. Don't know exactly what kind, but it lacked the toughness I often find in that species. They say it's cooked amandine style, but this is really different from the local classic. Marconi almonds--smaller and more interesting than the usual slivered kind--are in a lemon butter with thin French green beans around the sides.
That will be called the best dish of the night by many of us, but I think the next item was better. It's an old Brennan classic called steak Stanley. The pre-meltdown version of the dish had a big filet napped with marchand de vin sauce with mushrooms, and then covered with a creamy horseradish sauce. On the side were two quarters of broiled bananas, creating the best damn steak 'n' bananas in town. Slade reworked the dish such that the old red wine sauce is now a demi-glace with truffles. The horseradish is not visible, but it can indeed be tasted, with a sharp, spicy sauce and a slight sweetness. Sweet heat! Always great.
And here's something odd. As usual, I am writing this a few days after the day of the action described. Last night in Diary Time, I had yet another version of steak Stanley at Commander's Palace. I will report on that when we get to Saturday's report.
Getting back to the Eat Club Gala, we end the dinner with the only disappointment of the evening. The dessert was bananas Foster, whose absence in last year's dinner brought about some grumbling. This time we did have Brennan's most famous dish (it's also a worldwide dessert hit, and genuinely terrific). But they didn't flame it in the dining room. This may have owed to the long, narrow configuration of the dining room, but I have seen the restaurant perform the acts in a room this size. Well, we're getting closer.
As long as I'm complaining. . . for some reason, the printed menu for our dinner left out the identities of the wines. And we drank some rather unusual juice, at that. I promised a number of Eat Clubbers that I would publish the wine roll call here:
Val de Mer "Non Dose" Cremant de Bourgogne NV (a very dry sparkler)
Emmerich Knoll Gruner Veltliner Federspiel 2013 (great with the egg Sardou)
Txomin Etxaniz Getriako Txakolina 2014 (a mouthful of a Spanish wine, and I'm not just talking about the name)
Frederich Magnien Bourgogne Blanc 2009
Chateau Tour Bayard Montagne St Emilion 2010 (the biggest wine of the night)
El Maestro Sierra Pedro Ximenez (a beautiful sweet sherry, great with the bananas Foster)
The dinner wrapped up, Vic and Barbara Giancola asked whether I was up for a nightcap. That has been a tradition of ours that was solidified in the several cruises in which the Giancolas have joined us. We had already shut down the bar at Brennan's, so we crossed the street to the Rib Room's bar. There we had an accommodating bartender who was eager to put some energy into his mixology. He also was nice enough to validate my parking in the hotel. It wasn't until after eleven that we finally ended the celebration. We will return here next year, by popular demand. At least ten of our diners said that this was the best Eat Club event ever. That is typical of our Galas.
Oh, by the way: of the eighteen men in attendance, only three showed up without tuxedos. And even they all wore jackets and ties. If there is any place where dressing up for dinner will remain inviolate, it's the Eat Club Gala.
Brennan's. French Quarter: 417 Royal. 504-525-9711.
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Thursday, December 17, 2015.
Saul's Favorite Egg Dish.
If I work at home the day after an Eat Club, I can push all my daily deadlines forward an hour and a half, since I don't have to make the commute. That also lets me sleep an hour later. I didn't get home from last night's Eat Club until after midnight. I think I'll plug that schedule in from now on.
At lunchtime, I call Mary Ann and find out that she is at La Carreta with the lady who lives across the street, and who takes care of our pets while we're gone. She also has yard eggs from her many chickens. Good person to know.
I am mildly miffed that MA didn't tell me of these plans, but she says I should come join them, at what she says is "my favorite La Carreta." She is incorrect in thinking that I prefer the one in Covington to the restaurant in Mandeville. The Covington place had molé poblano for awhile, but no more. The Mandeville branch has a superior recipe for the house's bean soup, of which I get not a cup but a bowl every time I go. So I wind up wasting eight miles going from one to another.
The girls are nearly finished when I finally arrive, but they stay on for awhile in order to make fun of me. I'll take any kind of attention I can get.
The Covington La Carreta has a new menu. On it I find "Saul's Favorite." Saul (pronounced "sah-OOL," the Mexican way) is Saul Rubio, one of the owners of the La Carretas. One glance at the contents of Saul's Favorite tells me that this is a serious Mexican dish. Its centerpiece is eggs, for one thing. Eggs are much more commonly eaten in Mexico at lunch and dinner than they are here. We have two cheese and green chile enchiladas, topped by two poached eggs, which are in turn covered with thin avocado slices. This is served with thinly-sliced skirt steak from the grill. I could have done without the beef, so good was the egg concoction. I'll bet it really is Saul's favorite, not just a copy line. The dish will suffice for my eating needs the rest of the day.
Back home, I catch a little longer nap than usual (to erase the last effects of the Eat Club Gala last night) and roll with the radio show. It is very busy, largely with requests for discussion of prime rib, a classic Christmas dinner item.
After the show, Mary Ann and I head over to Red's to buy our Christmas tree. MA says that she could get by without a tree, and could even forgo Christmas altogether, since the kids are gone to their new lives. They will not be coming home for the holidays.
But, I tell her, I was twenty years old and living alone when I put up my first Christmas tree, and I did so every single single year until we married. When, of course, Christmas became essential. I'll know that my life has changed profoundly when I fail to pull out my bubble lights and decorate yet another Tannenbaum.
This is tree number forty-four for me. And it's our twenty-sixth Christmas at the Cool Water Ranch. I've lost track of how many trees we've bought at Red's Christmas tree lot on Claiborne Hill in Covington. It's at least eighteen, because as soon as Mary Leigh was old enough to have opinions--when she was about four--she has held the job of ultimate selector of Christmas trees. She has a studied, consistent eye. A tree must be full and shapely, but it must also have a serious defect, enough to make us feel a little sorry for the tree. But she and Dave have their own apartment now in Virginia. But we follow her standards. The tree we buy has a split in the trunk about halfway up, which creates a big empty spot. This raises MA's sympathy. It also makes her ask for a steep discount from the manager. She gets it knocked down to $50 from a tag of $75.
I will keep going to Red's mainly for the little free candy canes they give out in the office. It feels right, because it's cold and a bit squishy from recent rains. It's been about five years since we last saw Red himself, but I hear he's still at it.
La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.
La Carreta. Covington: 812 US 190. 985-400-5202.
Last year's Eat Club holiday gala in the Pineapple Room at Brennan's. [/caption]
So here we are, a year later. Same room. Same chef. Many of the same servers. The menu is similar to last year's. Many of tonight's Eat Clubbers were here last year, too. So we get a good reading of the progress Brennan's made in its new era. In brief, the restaurant is much less self-conscious than it was last year. With little experience, last year's service team defaulted to following the rules when in doubt, and it made the place seem a little unfriendly. Nothing could be done about that: hiring 125 experienced servers at the same time is not something any New Orleans restaurant could pull off. This evening the servers were much more cordial, smiled more and said yes to most off-beam requests.
[caption id="attachment_45599" align="alignnone" width="320"]
Brennan's executive chef Slade Rushing.[/caption]
The direction of the kitchen is interesting. The highly innovative executive chef Slade Rushing hews to traditional lines with his cooking, even as he sprinkles the menu liberally with new dishes.
The first course is a good example. In its soul it's crabmeat au gratin. But the chef added finely-chopped cauliflower and a bread crumb topping to the generous crabmeat component. If I were doing this, I think I would have pureed the cauliflower, but Slade's version was at least as good, and we learn that crabmeat and cauliflower are good partners.
Then comes a salad of bibb lettuce, leaves almost as big as the plates. These leaves are soft and good, and topped with shrimp and hearts of palm soaked in a citrus vinaigrette. At the bottom of the stack is a thick green sauce whose components I never found out, but it was so good that I wiped it up (and out) with French bread.
Which reminds me: Brennan's has the classic hot French bread that all restaurants like this used to serve.
Next, we get a single egg Sardou, the most popular entree on Brennan's famous breakfast menu. Poached egg, creamed spinach, hollandaise. It fits perfectly at this point in the dinner.
Course four of the six is a pretty, toasted slab of Gulf grouper. Don't know exactly what kind, but it lacked the toughness I often find in that species. They say it's cooked amandine style, but this is really different from the local classic. Marconi almonds--smaller and more interesting than the usual slivered kind--are in a lemon butter with thin French green beans around the sides.
That will be called the best dish of the night by many of us, but I think the next item was better. It's an old Brennan classic called steak Stanley. The pre-meltdown version of the dish had a big filet napped with marchand de vin sauce with mushrooms, and then covered with a creamy horseradish sauce. On the side were two quarters of broiled bananas, creating the best damn steak 'n' bananas in town. Slade reworked the dish such that the old red wine sauce is now a demi-glace with truffles. The horseradish is not visible, but it can indeed be tasted, with a sharp, spicy sauce and a slight sweetness. Sweet heat! Always great.
And here's something odd. As usual, I am writing this a few days after the day of the action described. Last night in Diary Time, I had yet another version of steak Stanley at Commander's Palace. I will report on that when we get to Saturday's report.
Getting back to the Eat Club Gala, we end the dinner with the only disappointment of the evening. The dessert was bananas Foster, whose absence in last year's dinner brought about some grumbling. This time we did have Brennan's most famous dish (it's also a worldwide dessert hit, and genuinely terrific). But they didn't flame it in the dining room. This may have owed to the long, narrow configuration of the dining room, but I have seen the restaurant perform the acts in a room this size. Well, we're getting closer.
As long as I'm complaining. . . for some reason, the printed menu for our dinner left out the identities of the wines. And we drank some rather unusual juice, at that. I promised a number of Eat Clubbers that I would publish the wine roll call here:
