Cafe Sbisa. French Quarter: 1011 Decatur St. 504-522-5565 .
Although she has a disdain for old-style restaurants, I not only manage to get Mary Leigh to join me for dinner at Café Sbisa, but to admit that she liked the look of the place. Co-owner and landlord Crag Napoli has indeed spiffed the place up for its reopening a few months ago. The best aspect of it is the relocation of the bar just inside the door on the right. Tables flank the bar on the left. They tell me this is not much different from what had prevailed in the past, but the spaciousness seems much enhanced to me. One feels as if he is in the bar and the dining room at the same time, and therefore gets the best of two atmospheric worlds. Or maybe even three: the George Dureau mural is such a fixture at Café Sbisa that its presence is assuring.
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Oysters Sbisa.[/caption]
The waitress seems to remember me from my last visit, when the wine guy and I went back and forth assessing the drinkables. Seems they hadn't unpacked all the wine yet that time, but it seems good enough now. Then ML and I attack her perennial problem: she doesn't eat seafood, and seafood dominates menus in this category.
But we are in luck. She loves a good chicken gumbo, and here it is. Given the excellence of the turtle soup I had here last time, I think it's clear that Chef and co-proprietor Alfred Singleton has the soup department nailed. ML finishes her selections with the wedge salad, one of her favorites. Whew! That takes care of that.
I begin with crab cakes, three of moderate size and a rich take on white remoulade sauce atop each of them. I remember that the pre-K Café Sbisa had developed a simple but irresistible sauce for anything containing a lot of crabmeat. It was equal quantities of mayonnaise and sour cream, plus lesser amounts of Creole mustard and horseradish. The stuff on the crab cake isn't that, exactly, but it's close and very, very good.
Then a strange variation of duck leg confit that comes across as deep-fried. Fresh-cut fries are underneath the duck, and bearnaise sauce shows up, too. I didn't find this came together well. And it was hard to eat on top of that. This dish needs further refinement, I'd say.
Or it may have been the slow, chilly Thursday night, in progress not only at Café Sbisa but in all the many establishments in the neighborhood. I was hoping to listen to the jazz band across the street, but they were packed up and gone.
In other news, ML says that her job is a little more fun every day. But she also asks me no to share details in this space. So too are secrets at the radio station. We know a change is coming, but what it is and when it happens, I don't know myself. I do know that it bodes well for me. Or so say the bosses, who I trust implicitly.
Cafe Sbisa. French Quarter: 1011 Decatur St. 504-522-5565
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Friday, February 3, 2017.
The Dentist. My Eating Assistant.
It's a long time since I last showed up in a dentist's office--or had any problem I needed a dentist to assay. I don't even have a regular dentist, but I did have a lead. A DDS in Mandeville has the same surname name of my most recent, long-ago guy. I tell him this and a few random facts. He tells me that I was without question served by his uncle--forty years ago. He goes on to name about a dozen other family members who were in the profession.
That said, and the condition of my teeth being what it is, I expected to be chided for negligence. No such thing came from my new dentists's mouth. He checked everything and said that we should make an appointment to install three new crowns and two new fillings. He also said that if I were game for an implant, he could bring about a very substantial improvement in the efficiency of my poor old choppers. "But we can talk about that in the future," he said.
I am then shifted to the dental hygienist, who tells me that I appear to have performed a better-than-average job of flossing over the years. On the other hand, she has a lot of chipping away to perform at the plaque. "You should floss more deeply," she says. I already know that flossing more deeply means to get down in there until it hurts a little.
And now the good news: my insurance covers almost everything other than the maybe implant. We discuss this. His uncle told me in 1977 that implants were promising but not yet perfected. His nephew says that this goal has been reached, and that implants are at least ninety-nine-percent effective, safe, and worth performing. "Given what you do for a living, I'd say you should consider it." (He's a listener to the radio show.)
I'm hungry, but my teeth feel tender, as normal. Neither of the Marys is home to be dined with. So I don't go out either. This is how I list seventy pounds. Some days, I don't feel like eating--a state of affairs I would have called preposterous five years ago. I need some extra sleep, anyway. There's nothing that can be done for me to avoid stress when dental worth is on the calendar.
