Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2016.
I Have A Friend At Café B.
Busy morning, as I launch this year's countdown of the 33 best seafood something-or-others in the Menu Daily. This year, the criteria for inclusion are 1) the dish must be excellent, and b) it must be either an entirely original dish, or one seldom encountered. Compiling such a list takes a lot of thought and time, but the hardest part of all is adjusting the NOMenu software to accommodate such a list.
I drive into town on a brilliant but cold midday. I have to rewrite the commercial for PJ's Coffee before I go on the air. I do the actual production in the ten-minute gap in the program at four. I do it yet again at five, when the client asks me to dump my reference to Lent (PJ's Coffee is, I note with a smirk, meat-free). They've let me get by with all of my humorisms so far, so I can't complain.
This is the season for false rumors of restaurant closings. What brings this on is that quite a few places take a vacation for a few days around Mardi Gras. For example, Galatoire's shuts down after the Friday lunch before Mardi Gras, and doesn't reopen until the day after Ash Wednesday. They don't even answer the phone--not quickly, anyway. Not knowing this may cause one to get the wrong idea.
So a man calls me on the radio and asks about the alleged closing of Feelings. That restaurant changed hands a year and a half ago, and now is up for sale again. But it isn't closed. I hope whoever takes charge has a good business plan, because this is a restaurant with a tremendous unrealized potential. Some of its buildings are among the oldest in all New Orleans.
To dinner at Café B, where I haven't dined in six months or so. I've tried, but moved on when the parking load requires my letting the valet take a shot at my stick shift. The place wasn't busy tonight, so in I go.
Steve Jeansonne is running the front door. He's the manager of Café B, but this is the first time I've ever run into him there, after at least a dozen dinners. Steve's wife Nancy was my radio show producer about twenty years ago. Steve was looking at a change of careers back then, and asked me what I thought about the restaurant biz. I told him he should go straight to the top--Commander's Palace--to put in his application. He did, they hired him, and he's kept moving up the ladder ever since, mostly in Ralph Brennan's many restaurants.
Another of the 500 people who live in New Orleans (that's all there are, is my theory about why you keep running into the same people all your life) is Michael Uddo. He recently took over the chef's job at Café B. He and his brother Mark became famous for their G&E Courtyard Grill in the late 1980s. He has been moving around ever since. Michael is a terrific chef, but like many people in his profession he has a wanderlust.
Michael had just departed when I arrived, but I got a chance to taste what he's cooking. The best evidence yet that crawfish are running strong and early this year is Café B's annual special crawfish menu. Normally, we wouldn't see such a thing until around March or April.
[caption id="attachment_50603" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crawfish bisque @ Cafe B.[/caption]
I begin with a bowl of crawfish bisque. Yes, it had the stuffed heads in the bowl. No, I couldn't dislodge the stuffing from the shells. (I continue to point out how much better crawfish bisque would be if they left the shells out and just made some fried crawfish boulettes instead.) The broth is delicious, although a Cajun might note that the roux wasn't dark enough by the standards of Lafayette or Ville Platte.
[caption id="attachment_50604" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baked oysters with melted Brie. [/caption]
Before the bisque came an amuse-bouche of two baked oysters on the half shells, each with a liquefied brie cheese running around in the shell. I am of two minds about cheese and oysters together. There's something wring with the idea, but at always seems to be good. Next comes shrimp remoulade, camouflaged in half a wedge iceberg salad. The menu says something about avocados, but I can't find them. The shrimp and its tangy sauce make up fifteen percent of the dish, but seventy-five percent of the goodness.
[caption id="attachment_50602" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Shrimp remoulade salad.[/caption]
The entree is a house specialty, seared drumfish with pecan meuniere sauce and brabant potatoes. This is not only very good to eat, but more filling than I would have guessed. So, while I am within the rules of abstinence on Ash Wednesday, I may have touched on gluttony in this meal.
[caption id="attachment_50601" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Drumfish penan meuniere.[/caption]
And I have dessert, too--a very large creme brulee with chicory café au lait included into the rather loose custard. I kill it.
[caption id="attachment_50600" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Creme brulee with cafe au lait.[/caption]
And I just realized that I had a glass of wine, which I shouldn't have on Ash Wednesday. But wait! Now that I'm sixty-five, I am exempt from fasting. Aha! But not from abstinence! Being a Catholic is not always easy.
Café B. Old Metairie: 2700 Metairie Road. 504-934-4700.
[divider type=""]
Crawfish bisque @ Cafe B.[/caption]
I begin with a bowl of crawfish bisque. Yes, it had the stuffed heads in the bowl. No, I couldn't dislodge the stuffing from the shells. (I continue to point out how much better crawfish bisque would be if they left the shells out and just made some fried crawfish boulettes instead.) The broth is delicious, although a Cajun might note that the roux wasn't dark enough by the standards of Lafayette or Ville Platte.
[caption id="attachment_50604" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baked oysters with melted Brie. [/caption]
Before the bisque came an amuse-bouche of two baked oysters on the half shells, each with a liquefied brie cheese running around in the shell. I am of two minds about cheese and oysters together. There's something wring with the idea, but at always seems to be good. Next comes shrimp remoulade, camouflaged in half a wedge iceberg salad. The menu says something about avocados, but I can't find them. The shrimp and its tangy sauce make up fifteen percent of the dish, but seventy-five percent of the goodness.
[caption id="attachment_50602" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Shrimp remoulade salad.[/caption]
The entree is a house specialty, seared drumfish with pecan meuniere sauce and brabant potatoes. This is not only very good to eat, but more filling than I would have guessed. So, while I am within the rules of abstinence on Ash Wednesday, I may have touched on gluttony in this meal.
[caption id="attachment_50601" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Drumfish penan meuniere.[/caption]
And I have dessert, too--a very large creme brulee with chicory café au lait included into the rather loose custard. I kill it.
[caption id="attachment_50600" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Creme brulee with cafe au lait.[/caption]
And I just realized that I had a glass of wine, which I shouldn't have on Ash Wednesday. But wait! Now that I'm sixty-five, I am exempt from fasting. Aha! But not from abstinence! Being a Catholic is not always easy.
