[title type="h5"]Sunday, February 15, 2015.
One Letter Makes Me Work All Day. [/title]
In my email today is a request from a subscriber to the website that the restaurants listings include the price info. A couple of months ago, I redefined that data. Instead of estimating what dinner would cost in the restaurants, I now take the average price of an entree in each place. This is much more definite than the old system. Now all I have to do is work the graphic into all the reviews and listings. Let's see. . . I have around 500 places with full reviews. And I have nine different lists of all the restaurants in town. It takes about two minutes to add the price info in one listing. So 150 hours.
I spend about four hours planning this operation. It sounds trivial, but it's features like this that appeal most to readers. I'm lucky to know what they want. On other fields (radio, for example), I have very little idea what listeners want from me.
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Zea's Asian oysters.[/caption]
Dinner at Zea. I hear that they will shortly have the Asian fried oysters that they run as a Lenten special every year. It may be the best dish they ever serve at Zea. But I'm apparently ahead of time for that. But other dishes beckon. I like the Sunday soup of the day: a chunky, lightly creamy tomato soup with a bit of parmesan cheese. I tell them to leave the latter ingredient out. More often than not, a gratuitous bit of cheese adds less than nothing to a dish.
The forecast for Mardi Gras is that the Fahrenheit will be in the 30s and it will be raining, perhaps heavily. That sounds worse than last year, which was the second most unpleasant Mardi Gras weather in my memory. (Beating it was 1978, the first and only time in its 122 years that Comus called off its parade due to the weather.)
[title type="h5"]Monday, February 16, 2015.
Lundi Gras. Beans.[/title]
So I'm still baching it while the Marys luxuriate in the Langham Hotel in Pasadena. I do the radio show at home, and that is the only part of the day that doesn't feel hollow. There is no chorus rehearsal tonight, even. I drive over there to make sure, stopping for red beans and rice with grilled pork chops at New Orleans Food and Spirits. So I play my role as a walking New Orleans cliche while Lundi Gras plays out its rituals. All the parades have been moved up to avoid the rainstorms on the way.
[title type="h5"]
New Orleans Food & Spirits. West End & Bucktown: 210 Hammond Hwy. 504-828-2220. || Harvey: 2330 Lapalco Blvd. 504-362-0800. || Covington: 208 Lee Lane. 985-875-0432. [/title]
