Monday, December 28, 2015.
Listmaking. Downpouring.
Readers of restaurant reviews love lists. I don't make up as many of them as I should, given all the information I have on the website. But it takes a long time to make a list. Today I found a new approach that's so obvious it's almost stupid: I began the list of the Two Dozen Best Standard (i.e., not new) Restaurants of 2015, but I intentionally didn't finish it. When I come back to it tomorrow, I will end up with a better editorial product, with photos and everything. But that's too much to get done in one day.
Indeed, it leaves time for Mary Ann and me to have lunch. New Orleans Food and Spirits, featuring pecan catfish (delicious) and these funny little potato kinda-mashed blobs (not so good). I would ordinarily have my weekly plate of red beans, but I'm not that hungry, and the kitchen steadfastly refuses to serve anything but an enormous platter of beans.
The classic complaint about restaurants is that they serve small portions. I find just the opposite is true. Most restaurants dole out far too much food, which allows them to get away with carelessness.
Another day of ditch-filling rainstorms. Even the weathermen are in awe of these systems, with their inches of rainfall and tornados. Two tornados traveling together kicked off sirens and bulletins from my cellphone at three in the morning. Amazing as well as scary.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015.
Forty-Seven Years Ago, We Were Blue Jays.
Mary Ann has to bring her car to the shop. The oil pan isn't screwed on properly--same problem I had with my flivver a month ago. She walks several miles to the Cool Water Ranch from the shop. Later, she walks back. If she doesn't watch it, this kind of activity will have the eyes of the boys checking out her figure.
I don't quite match the length of MA's hike, but I take two fifteen-block walks, to and from the forty-seventh annual Jesuit High School Class of 1968 Holiday Reunion. As always, it's at the Court of Two Sisters, whose owner Jay Fein is a classmate. Same menu for years: a salad, followed by osso buco, then a chocolate cake. I skip the osso buco (it triggers the gout in this kind of weather) and ask for a bowl of turtle soup instead. It's as fine as always.
Statistics: Almost forty of our fellows show up. Nobody has passed on in the past year. Nor for the last five or six years, in fact. We seem to have better luck with this macabre matter than the classes that preceded and followed us. I count five people (including myself) who did not actually graduate from Jesuit. Nobody has ever objected to their inclusion.
I drink half a Sazerac and half a glass of wine at the lunch. This doesn't affect my coherence on the radio, but it helps that the show is a tasting of four bubbly wines brought by Dan Davis (the Wine Guy at Commander's), Adam Aquistapace (and co-owner of the well-known Covington supermarket), and Sara Kavanagh, (once dining room manager at the Windsor Court Grill Room, now working with Ric Hopper at his eponymous Uptown wine store).
Our on-air tasting brings forth a few items of interest. We all decide--they try to convince the audience--that a standard white-wine glass is better for bringing out the flavors and aromas of Champagne than flutes do. But it may be some time before this will mush the flute aside, what with its suggestive slimness, which the ladies love.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2015.
Another Look And Taste Of Le Foret.
More rainstorms overnight, dropping almost enough water to flood the roads around the ranch, but not enough to cause problems.
Mary Ann and I meet up with our longtime friends the Klunas. Oliver was my best man; he and Carolyn are Jude's godparents. They are thrilled to see pictures of Jude and his newborn. Having dinner with the Klunas is as much a fixture of our Yuletide as Jingle Bells.
Le Foret is not the restaurant it once was--I once had it listed with five stars. But it's still very good, and MA says she thinks it's as fine-looking a dining room as can be found hereabouts. Le Foret is still on the short list for restaurants for Mary Leigh's wedding reception in the fall. We make no further progress about that.
We do, however, have a fine dinner. Both Oliver and I have very good steaks--his a grilled hanger, mine a sous-vide-then-seared tenderloin. Mary Ann eats fish, Carolyn has barbecue shrimp. We tell jokes and jokey remembrances all night.
Dr. Bob Debellevue appears, with a reservation for four at the table next to ours. Dr. Bob was also a groomsman of mine when Oliver gave me away to Mary Ann. He is sharing a bottle of Grange, the most famous wine in Australia. He shares a splash of it with me. Friends with great cellars are nice to know.
Le Foret. CBD: 129 Camp. 504-553-6738.
