Saturday, February 18, 2017.
Don't Take My Chair!
It's a loose day. My Saturday errands are done before noon, when I go on WWL with a two-hour show. As usual, it's the easiest show of the week for me, with lots of callers asking lots of good questions.
Mary Leigh meets me for lunch at La Carreta. She has brought her dog Bauer with her, all the way across the lake, so the pooch can get better exercise than he does in town. Usually she ties Bauer up in La Carreta's courtyard, but none of the tables where this can be done are available. Another customer offers to move himself and his three friends to make our job possible.
This reveals an interesting dynamic in restaurants. Once a customer is seated, a restaurateur must have a serious problem for him to ask a customer to move to another table. This has come up a few times over the years at our Eat Club dinners. Usually, the problem is that a group of four can't find enough room together. Because we always let all the Eat Clubbers to pick their tables and seats, it sometimes happens that the only way I can find a place for everyone is to ask somebody to move. Most of the time, the Eat Clubbers don't mind, but I pick up a vibe that says the moving customers are not entirely happy about the change.
[caption id="attachment_52400" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Chicken a la Diabla, from the Monterrey menu @ La Carreta.[/caption]
So I profusely thank the man who this afternoon gave us his table. Bauer has a happy half-hour tied to the table--he loves being with people--waiting for us to pass him another tortilla chip. He also gets a couple of piece of skirt steak to swallow without chewing. I wonder if dogs actually taste anything.
ML has other engagements for the rest of the day. I adjourn to the Cool Water Ranch for a 90-minute walk, a shower, and a long nap. After the big platter at La Carreta, I would not be hungry the rest of the day. I spend it in the office trying to manage the hundreds of little jobs that always fills my desk.
Boring? Yes, I know.
La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.
[divider type=""]
Sunday, February 19, 2017.
A Face From The Past.
The Sunday routine. I sing at the ten o'clock Mass. I do a little shopping. Then I fetch up for brunch at Forks and Corks. That restaurant is on my mind because Mary Ann has sold it an ad. I am the graphic artist for all of MA's ads, tapping my earliest skill in the publishing business. Every week for many years, I wrote and designed all the ads in the weekly newspaper Figaro, for which I worked through most of its nine-year history. I also wrote articles for the paper, and by the time its lifetime came to an end, I was the editor-in-chief.
I like the brunch at F&C, mainly because it's more like lunch at Galatoire's than breakfast at Brennan's. They have a few egg dishes, but for the most part the restaurant is sauteeing speckled trout and redfish for platters that will also include brabant potatoes, asparagus, meuniere sauce and turtle soup.
[caption id="attachment_49948" align="alignleft" width="242"]
Blackened fish salad with spinach. Kinda like the one we have with fried oysters.[/caption]
On the way out, I am halted by a man whose face I know but whose identity I don't. He gives me a clue by mentioning St. Rita's in Harahan. Ah. I know him now. He and his brothers were at that excellent parochial grammar school the same time I was. I think we may even have played ball together during that wonderful summer of my twelfth year, when the world was about baseball, bicycling, baseball cards, wandering in the woods, and the avoidance of girls. The following summer, the girls would intrude, and I had to deal with the fact that they were far ahead of me in every way. As I recall, the guy I spoke with now was more comfortable with the ladies than I was. Which wouldn't take much.
Forks & Corks. Covington: 141 TerraBella Blvd. 985-273-3663.
