Saturday, February 11, 2017.
We Are Sneaked Into A Full Restaurant.
None of our family festivities ever fit into a single day. Today is the actual wedding anniversary for MA and me. And although we had two substantial meals in celebration, we are not finished.
As we seek out a good restaurant for our real anniversary, Mary Ann first asks for my thoughts. This is a waste of time, since none of my ideas will be accepted. Worse than that, we wind up with no reservations and little time to search for one. It's always complicated by our anniversary's proximity to Valentine's Day.
And so it is that we patrol old Covington in the early evening for empty spaces. We already know that Lola--a bistro we like but dine in less than often--is closed for the weekend, because chef-owner Keith Frentz is down with the flu. I found that out when we tried to get in for brunch earlier in the day.
We find space at Dakota, and we had all but started the car when we saw Torre Solazzo--co-owner with her husband David of Del Porto, the best Italian restaurant in the New Orleans area--following as we cross the street. We had just been told by a hostess that Del Porto was fully booked until nine o'clock. Torre tell us that, like most restaurateurs, they save a table or two for regular customers who turn up at the last minute. Turning up at the last minute is a hallmark of our family. It helps that I mention it is our anniversary.
The dinner is swell, as it always is. I begin with crudo of black drum, with an exciting mix of citrus, herbs, and crunchy stuff. Mary Ann has a dish of the white bean dip they make here so well. It's almost hummus, but with a much different flavor. Mary Leigh indulges in the pear salad. A beet salad lands in front of MA, preceding a platter of short ribs of beef that the Marys split. They control most of the taste for short ribs in our house. The slowly-lowly-cooked meat rarely presses my button. It seems like roast beef poor-boy meat and gravy. I love that, but in its place.
My main is a study of duck leg confit. It's turned out with potatoes and other woodsy elements, and is perfect for the semi-cool weather lately. The waiter said (I think) that this is a new interpretation of duck leg, and indeed I can't remember having had that here. But it worked for me, and fits right into the Tuscan theme Del Porto pursues here for the most part.
Dessert takes a new stab at king cake. I don't quite get the concept, but it took us out on a playful note. I am happy with this ends of our anniversary feasting.
Del Porto. Covington: 501 E Boston St. 985-875-1006.
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Sunday, February 12, 2017.
My Days Keep Growing.
A big card of activity claims ownership of the entire day. It begins with the usual Sunday singing. I come right home after Mass, then head right out with Mary Ann as my chauffeur. She drops me off at the radio station, where I begin a new on-air series: Tom On Sunday. I'm now on a seven-day-a-week schedule. It sounds like too much, but it's a fair swap. My weekday shows will shrink from three hours--which, I've decided, is an hour too long--to two. The weekend shows on the powerhouse WWL Radio are much easier for me. So I go from an eighteen-hour on-air week to sixteen. During a lot of the year, the weekend shows are pre-empted by sports, so it becomes an even better deal.
After the new Sunday show, I go to my office, roll out a pad onto the floor, and take an hour-long nap. Refreshed--and I needed to be, as will be seen shortly--I catch up on some of my e-mail and other jobs. After an hour of that, I walk the ten blocks to the Court of Two Sisters, where at seven I will give a talk about Topic A.
The organization I address is a national association of forensic dentists. Those are the guys who identify corpses by comparing the deceased's teeth with dental records. It's safe to say that this is the most unusual group ever to hear my Soup-Du-Jour Trilogy.
They prove to be convivial guys (almost all forty of them are men). They tell no tales about oddities encountered over the years in performing their jobs. Most of them are fans of New Orleans, and want to know what the food scene is around here these days. Can do.
We have dinner before my talk. The Court of Two Sisters has been generally better than it was ten or twenty years ago, but this dinner was not strong evidence of that. Might have been a budget issue.
Mary Ann, having spent the day with her siblings and friends, collects me in front of Brennan's at around nine. She has parked in what looks like another of her magical parking spaces in the French Quarter. But the man in charge of that determination tells us that this was not a legal spot, and that he was about to put her car (the 380,000-mile Honda, thank goodness, and not the BMW) on the hook. But the officer gives her a reprieve. The Parking Witch does it again!
