Thursday, February 25, 2016.
The Royal Turkey.
I am hearing great things about a Mexican restaurant at the point where Broadmoor, Mid-City and Uptown Meet. It's the intersection where Napoleon Avenue, South Broad Street, and Fontainebleau Drive all dissolve into one another and cease to exist. Or emerge from nothingness. A coin flipped at this point will always land on tails. No--wait. It's the spot where water going into the catch basins goes straight down, never forming a vortex. Or was it. . . well, I'll look it up and get back to you.
I am a little quicker than usual to try this new place for the first time, because the restaurant's building has special meaning to me. It used to be one of the Time Saver stores where I worked during the summer of 1968. I was seventeen, but I managed stores while the regular managers were on vacation. I was a part-timer, but I had worked in the stores so long that I knew how to run one better than any of the other employees in a given store.
The building--originally a drugstore--was a peculiar location for a Time Saver. It was the only store that didn't have a parking lot. It also had a female clerk--the only one in the whole chain at that time.
But back to the present. The name of the restaurant is El Pavo Real--"The Royal Turkey." I don't know why they call it that. No turkey occurs on the menu. But I scarcely have time to think about that before a paper shovel full of buttery, spicy popcorn is brought out as an amuse bouche. I gobble it right on down. Then comes a bowl of black bean soup, rendered into a puree and decorated on top with swirls of crema. If it had been me, I would have loosened up the texture. But as is, it's quite good.
[caption id="attachment_50773" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Black bean soup and El Pavo Real.[/caption]
The entree is half a chicken with molé poblano. Restaurants that serve a good version of this chocolate-and-chili sauce--which I think is the best classic sauce on earth, with the exception of bearnaise--immediately move up the list of best Mexican eateries. And here it is. And this is only the beginning of the menu, which goes on to include a variety of distinctly gourmet items.
[caption id="attachment_50772" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mole poblano with chicken.[/caption]
I can hardly wait to return for more. I will remember to bring a bottle of wine. El Pavo Real doesn't yet have a liquor license, but they allow you to bring your own with no corkage. Another hallmarks of a new restaurant is rough service, but that is not a problem at all here.
El Pavo Real. Broadmoor: 4401 S. Broad St.. 504-266-2022.
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Friday, February 26, 2016.
Overdue Revisit To The Upperline.
Mary Ann struck out for Washington, D.C. for a visit with our daughter Mary Leigh. MA will drive the 1070 miles in a straight shot, leaving at five-thirty in the morning. She says it's not grueling to her. Better her than me. One of the reasons for this itinerary is that ML still has a lot of stuff here at the Cool Water Ranch that she wants MA to deliver to her apartment. And MA is looking for an excuse to go. Plenty more where that all came from.
[caption id="attachment_50778" align="alignright" width="320"]
JoAnn Clevenger at her desk at The Upperline. [/caption]After a sluggish radio show, I walk six parking lot floors to find my car. Two of the three elevators are out of order, making this even harder. On the other hand, it makes up for part of the walk I didn't take today.
I meet my little sister Lynn for dinner at the Upperline. I have not been there in quite awhile--long enough that I meet new chef Trent Osborne for the first time. What motivates my visit is that I have very few photos of the Upperline. I take quite a few tonight.
And I miss talking with JoAnn Clevenger, the owner. One upon a decade, she was on the radio with me, and kept up a conversation so fascinating that we blew right through the news and the commercials to let her talk for an hour and a quarter. I've never done that with anyone else.
[caption id="attachment_50777" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Oysters St. Claude.[/caption]
Lynn and I order mostly Upperline standards. Oysters St. Claude, for starters. The recipe comes from the extinct but beloved Restaurant Mandich, and may be the best fried oyster dish in town. A pad of spicy stuff where the bivalves meet the plate gives particular energy to the dish.
Next comes turtle soup. Not for the first time, I forget Lynn's lifelong aversion to that potage. She is otherwise not very hungry, having had a substantial lunch with a friend, not knowing I was going to call her. She eats light, with the house salad of interesting greens and goat cheese in lieu of an entree.
But I keep on going, and discover a spectacular special featuring rare tuna in the center, a lot of interesting greens, and a buttery-peppery sauce. Best dish of the night. I hope they keep this on the menu.
[caption id="attachment_50776" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tuna special at The Upperline.[/caption]
The waiter--who either has been at the Upperline for decades or who waited on me somewhere else a long time ago--tells me that the dessert to get is the coffee-flavored creme brulee. As good as advertised.
I show Lynn my new car. She and I were both still living with our parents when I bought my first blue Volkswagen Beetle. I was fifteen. So she has a special understanding about the deeper meaning of my buying another Beetle at my present age.
Upperline. Uptown: 1413 Upperline. 504-891-9822.
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Saturday, February 27, 2016.
Shut Out Of My Solo. A Great Radio Guy Goes Away.
It's a goofed-up day, and I get nowhere near as much done as I was hoping. Alissa Rowe, the director of NPAS, writes to tell me that I can't perform my doo-wop song at the Beau Chene show tonight, because I have not had even a single run-through. I was in Los Angeles the day of the first one, and my radio show is on the air today at rehearsal time. Oh, well. I have to agree that I am not ready. For the background singers to go "she-bop she-bop" at the right moment requires more than zero planning.
To lunch, noonish, at the Fat Spoon. I had a great breakfast at their new Covington location a couple of months ago. Now I want to try their lunch stuff. A roast beef poor boy, to be exact. For once in my life, I get the right amount of gravy: none. It's served on the side, and therefore can't turn the bread into mush. Really, a good roast beef doesn't need more than a quarter cup of gravy to do its job.
The sandwich is excellent. The beef is more or less debris-style, with strings of beef about the size of kitchen matchsticks. The fries are frozen, but they come out crisp and hot. I can only finish half of the whole serving, and bring the rest home. That is something I do only rarely, but this one calls for it.
A five-lap walk around the ranch takes me until five, when the sun is still up and the weather beautiful.
I watch A Prairie Home Companion on my computer. I didn't know you could do that. I know it only as a radio program. Strange to see it live. Garrison Keilor says he is retiring after tonight's show, but he doesn't say much else about that. He announced his departure about a year ago. I envy him that program, which I believe is the finest radio show in the history of the medium. I wonder how it will get along without Keillor, who is a musician, a writer, a humorist, a raconteur, and a radio guy. All the things I always wanted to be, and am, if at a much lower level.
Mary Ann can't stand A Prairie Home Companion.
To a light dinner at Tchoupstix. I wonder where sushi shops get the names for their special rolls. The one I have tonight is called a Porter roll. Who is Porter? He combines salmon, spicy tuna, avocado, cucumber, and a gew other things. The chef asks if I will try a sauce he made especially for rolls like this one. It's pepper-hot enough to create steam above my pate. Best item I've had so far here.
Fat Spoon Cafe. Covington: 2807 N US Highway 190. 985-893-5111.
Tchoupstix. Covington: 69305 LA Hwy 21. 985-892-0852.
The building--originally a drugstore--was a peculiar location for a Time Saver. It was the only store that didn't have a parking lot. It also had a female clerk--the only one in the whole chain at that time.
But back to the present. The name of the restaurant is El Pavo Real--"The Royal Turkey." I don't know why they call it that. No turkey occurs on the menu. But I scarcely have time to think about that before a paper shovel full of buttery, spicy popcorn is brought out as an amuse bouche. I gobble it right on down. Then comes a bowl of black bean soup, rendered into a puree and decorated on top with swirls of crema. If it had been me, I would have loosened up the texture. But as is, it's quite good.
[caption id="attachment_50773" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Black bean soup and El Pavo Real.[/caption]
The entree is half a chicken with molé poblano. Restaurants that serve a good version of this chocolate-and-chili sauce--which I think is the best classic sauce on earth, with the exception of bearnaise--immediately move up the list of best Mexican eateries. And here it is. And this is only the beginning of the menu, which goes on to include a variety of distinctly gourmet items.
[caption id="attachment_50772" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mole poblano with chicken.[/caption]
I can hardly wait to return for more. I will remember to bring a bottle of wine. El Pavo Real doesn't yet have a liquor license, but they allow you to bring your own with no corkage. Another hallmarks of a new restaurant is rough service, but that is not a problem at all here.
JoAnn Clevenger at her desk at The Upperline. [/caption]After a sluggish radio show, I walk six parking lot floors to find my car. Two of the three elevators are out of order, making this even harder. On the other hand, it makes up for part of the walk I didn't take today.
I meet my little sister Lynn for dinner at the Upperline. I have not been there in quite awhile--long enough that I meet new chef Trent Osborne for the first time. What motivates my visit is that I have very few photos of the Upperline. I take quite a few tonight.
And I miss talking with JoAnn Clevenger, the owner. One upon a decade, she was on the radio with me, and kept up a conversation so fascinating that we blew right through the news and the commercials to let her talk for an hour and a quarter. I've never done that with anyone else.
[caption id="attachment_50777" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Oysters St. Claude.[/caption]
Lynn and I order mostly Upperline standards. Oysters St. Claude, for starters. The recipe comes from the extinct but beloved Restaurant Mandich, and may be the best fried oyster dish in town. A pad of spicy stuff where the bivalves meet the plate gives particular energy to the dish.
Next comes turtle soup. Not for the first time, I forget Lynn's lifelong aversion to that potage. She is otherwise not very hungry, having had a substantial lunch with a friend, not knowing I was going to call her. She eats light, with the house salad of interesting greens and goat cheese in lieu of an entree.
But I keep on going, and discover a spectacular special featuring rare tuna in the center, a lot of interesting greens, and a buttery-peppery sauce. Best dish of the night. I hope they keep this on the menu.
[caption id="attachment_50776" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tuna special at The Upperline.[/caption]
The waiter--who either has been at the Upperline for decades or who waited on me somewhere else a long time ago--tells me that the dessert to get is the coffee-flavored creme brulee. As good as advertised.
I show Lynn my new car. She and I were both still living with our parents when I bought my first blue Volkswagen Beetle. I was fifteen. So she has a special understanding about the deeper meaning of my buying another Beetle at my present age.
