[title type="h5"]Tuesday, February 10, 2015.
La Provence Chef. Chocolate Tasting. Tommy's Wine Bar Guy.[/title]
The Round-Table radio session was of the sort I hope they all will be. Three very different guests with interesting lookouts keep a good conversation going for the full two hours.
The most unusual of these is Kelly Holder, who has a chocolate-making business. She brings in a show-and-tell I've never seen before: a chocolate tasting. Six varieties of chocolate--set up on the same kind of placemat used for wine tastings--show a fascinating range of flavors, with varying richness, bitterness, sweetness, and nuance. She also came with a box of hand-made chocolate truffles. (Not to be confused with real truffles, which are sort of like mushrooms.) I have enough of these to pass around among our staff, particularly the ladies. It's how I make myself popular.
[caption id="attachment_46657" align="alignnone" width="133"]
Kelly Holder.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_46658" align="alignnone" width="133"]
Chris Duplantis.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_46656" align="alignnone" width="133"]
Erik Loos.[/caption]
Then we talk to Chris Duplantis, who runs the wine bar next door to (and part of) Tommy's Restaurant. Tommy Andrade is a devoted wine guy himself, so Chris gets a lot of leeway in stocking his cellar. He also says, to my dismay, that they don't have regularly-scheduled music in there anymore. The piano remains, however. I wonder if I can find a keyboardist who. . . well, never mind.
Erik Loos (last name pronounced "lowss" is the top guy on the scene at La Provence. It took a few years before Jon Besh brought Erik on and made him a partner at the five-star restaurant in Lacombe. Since that happened, La Provence has been as good as it ever was, and probably better. And I am including the long reign of Chef Chris Kerageorgiou in that consideration.
I will be home alone this weekend. Maybe I'll stop in at La Provence this Sunday. Saturday, the restaurant has been fully reserved for weeks. Valentine's Day. But a lot of the overflow will turn up on Sunday, says Erik. So much for that idea.
Joe Impastato wants to have an Eat Club at his North Shore restaurant in the next few weeks. That gives me an excuse to sit down to his fantastic fettuccine Alfredo. And following it with a romaine salad and redfish with artichokes and mushrooms. And a stick of spumoni. (Angelo Brocato's spumone really does come by the stick. It would be great even if it were in the shape of a carburetor.)
Joe sits down and tells me that he will be at the Madisonville edition of his restaurant on Wednesdays starting the week after Mardi Gras. He also wants to know if I know of anyone who'd be interested in managing the operations of the place six days a week. Not that his daughter and her husband--who are there all the time--are going anywhere. Like most restaurateurs, Joe would like to clone himself so he can have two restaurants doing things his way.
We settle on the day between St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's Days for the Eat Club. (That's March 18.) The menu is the usual overfeed. I'll try to talk him down a little on the food and the price. This might be the right moment to test an idea: if we make the wine a separate deal, we might attract more people. I think this is almost certainly true for the North Shore.
I tell singer Roy Picou what someone told me on the air last week. The caller, who sounded young, said he and some friends had a great dinner at Impastato's, and then ticked off all the things he liked about it. "One of those items," I said to Roy, "I'm hesitant to tell you. I don't think the caller meant to offend, but he said--"
"Did he say something about an old man singing in the bar?" asked Roy, whose job is exactly that. I'm glad he laughed it off. Roy is in his seventies. But Tony Bennett is in his eighties, and he's still performing.
[title type="h5"]Impastato's. Metairie: 3400 16th St. 504-455-1545. [/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris February 18, 2015 13:01 in
