Friday, February 17, 2017.
The Sole Brothers.
I must go into town because a trivial piece of bookkeeping that I forgot needs my attention. Mary Leigh is too busy to go to dinner with me. I wind up at Andrea's. Reason: I made the mistake of telling him that I had some excellent Dover sole at that Brennan's/Four Seasons restaurant dinner of a couple of weeks ago.
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Chef Andrea.[/caption]
Andrea jumps right on that. He has Dover sole on his menu all the time, and he is happy to assemble the dish table side for me tonight.
Dover sole is a hallmark of first-class restaurants in Europe of twenty or more years. Andrea is a classically trained chef from that era, and considers it important to serve this kind of thing.
It's very expensive, Dover sole. And the texture is a little soft for me (no matter who cooked it). But what Andrea does is credible, with the emulsified brown butter traditionally draped over the fish.
Other conversations get started at my table. Merlin Chauvin--a genuine Thai Cajun--is running the dining room at Andrea's these days. He had worked a long time in his family's restaurant, La Thai Cuisine on Prytania Street. But he wants to run his own place. He has clearly thought very deeply about the important points of operating a restaurant, and we have a long conversation about that.
I hang out at Andrea's too long. The musician in the Capri Blu bar is Bobby Ohler, who plays the piano and blows a horn and sings, too. He has played for a long time with Ronnie Kole, who has high standards of musicianship (even though he has allow me to sing with him now and then). Bobby backs me up on "Misty," then I hit the road. It's supposed to rain again tonight.
