Tuesday, December 5, 2016.
Station 6.
After three previous failed attempts, I find a parking space at Station 6, the new seafood restaurant in Bucktown. A badly-needed new gravel lot of about a dozen spaces has been added since last time. Mary Ann never has this problem. In her five or six meals premature meals at Station 6, she always found a spot for her lumbering SUV. She is the parking witch.
The restaurant's name refers to the enormous drainage pumping station at the head of the outfall canal in the center of the city. It's the largest pumping station in the world, now defended against catastrophic flood waters in Lake Pontchartrain by a new system of gates. Those gates are right behind Station 6, whose building formerly housed Two Tonys restaurant. Two Tonys moved to its present location near the marina a couple of years ago. This is curious, because the Two Tonys were told that the Corps of Engineers needed their restaurant's old location. So how did Station 6 get it? There's something missing here.
More important to our lookout is the duo of Station 6's owners, Allison Vega-Knoll and her husband Drew Knoll. Allison was the founder of Vega Tapas Café years ago. She and Drew in recent years been working for hotels in the Caribbean, but they apparently have New Orleans in their hearts.
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Station 6 in Bucktown.[/caption]
In its design Station 6 looks like a classic neighborhood-style New Orleans seafood café. One can get seafood gumbo, oysters on the half shell, fried platters and such like. But the menu continues in more ambitious directions. Our table's initial order begins with clam chowder with too many potato cubes and not enough clams, spinach Madeleine made with the authentic garlic cheese spread (MA loves it), and a big Number One male blue crab submerged in a boat of seafood gumbo (very good but at $22.
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Brisket sandwich.[/caption]
Then comes a wedge salad with a green goddess blue cheese dressing. That's for Mary Leigh, who is not a a seafood eater. She has a tough time finding something to eat from this mostly-seafood menu. She winds up with a shredded barbecue brisket sandwich of very large size and goodness.
Mary Ann always orders fish and chips no matter where she finds them, even though the track record of goodness is dismal, even in London. But Station 6 abandons the standard recipe and sends out cornmeal-roasted, wild-caught, crisp and crunchy Des Allemands fried catfish. The fries are also good American-style. None of us can decide whether these are fresh-cut fries.
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Pompano at Station 6.[/caption]
My entree tops the menu at $28. It is a beautiful fillet of grilled pompano with a mildly oversalty butter sauce. Very enjoyable.
The chef has long since discovered my presence, and we get an assortment of very well-made desserts on the house. The best of these is either the bread pudding or the chocolate item that the Marys had down before I could even think about what it might have been.
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Chocolate pie @ Station 6.[/caption]
Bottom line: the excitement that the recent opening of this seafood resto is entirely deserved. It is decidedly on the next chapter in the book, "Seafood Restaurants of New Orleans." One of the best casual eateries this year.
Station 6. West End & Bucktown: 105 Metairie-Hammond Hwy.
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Wednesday, December 6, 2016.
Trenasse.
I meet the Marys downtown, and we start looking for a dinner restaurant. There is some sort of rally or party going on in Lafayette Square, enough to have our first dinner option Marcello's full up until nine tonight. Herbsaint is also a full house, and Desi Vega's appears to be as well, although we didn't ask. We are headed toward Luke when I think about Trenasse at the Hotel Inter-Continental. For once, the Marys go along with this idea.
In all my four or five dinners at Trenasse, I have found the cooking surprisingly fine. Today is no exception. We begin with some grilled oysters, which differ from most in being cooked just enough for them to be called cooked, with a texture more like that of raw oysters. This is good enough that I get an order of Rockefellers. I think they ought to rethink the recipe, which is overwhelmed with creamed spinach and mornay sauce.
An amuse-bouche comes with a small fillet of grouper and a cauliflower steak. The latter, strange as it sounds, is an enormous hit at our table. MA couldn't get enough of it.
The first main course brings two kinds of gumbo: duck in one, seafood in the other, and a turtle soup that come across like another gumbo variant. This is followed by ML's standard wedge salad and MA's three double-cut lamb chops on a bed of white beans. Even Mary Ann--not a lamb lover--is grabbed by this platter. Trenasse is not limited in its scope to seafood, as good as the seafood is.
We all overeat, especially me. But for the best reason: the food here is surprisingly excellent.
I coyly mention that it's Mary Ann's birthday. (It's also Pearl Harbor Day, which helps me remember.) The chef sends us a couple of desserts, both of them in Ball jars. (Trenasse has a rural, middle-of-nowhere quality in its atmosphere.) A very moist trifle, this gets a unique flavor from house-made creme de menthe.
In other news, Mary Leigh has finished her second day on her new job, and she is encouraged by what assignments came her way today. From what she tells us, the main project for all the staff seems to be to clean up after oneself. But that's a good assignment no matter what one does. My mental disarray of the past year surely has something to do with the messiness of my home office.
Trenasse. CBD: 444 St Charles Ave. 504-680-7000.
