Monday, March 10, 2014.
Pre-Vacation. Acme With Miss Hot Pants.
I stop short of saying I hate going on vacation. But my feeling is very close to that. Ask anyone who is self-employed, or whose job is so personal or specialized that nobody else can step in and perform it, and you'll hear my lament. We have to do all the work for all the days we'll be gone, in addition to current work. What we don't get done in advance has to be caught up with when we return. It's a good thing that the rewards are great enough to make it worthwhile. Even if it's just barely.
Mary Leigh wanted dinner. Mary Ann, who stepped on a scale for the first time in months, said she would be keeping a Lenten fast and would not be joining us.
As my daughter and I left the house, I noticed that she wore the abbreviated pants that she often wears around the house. Beautiful young women--even shy, conservative women like my daughter--can get away with wearing whatever they want. But the prudish father in me said, "Is that all you're wearing to go out? Won't you be cold?" (Note the deft shift of my logic away from seeming to tell her what her style should be.) The look she gave me said, "Why are you so stupid?"
Dinner was the Acme standard. A dozen grilled oysters and a cup of stuffed artichoke soup for me, and a wedge salad with the Acme's overload of blue cheese and tomatoes for her. For the second time in a couple of weeks, the Acme was so busy we had to wait for a table. Must be Lent.
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Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Overfull Round Table. Orleans Bistro.
With two big charity food events this weekend, the Round Table radio show had a roomful. Beginning with the people whose chronology is most in the future, Jeffrey Hansell is soon to opened a restaurant called Oxlot 9 in the Southern Hotel, which is planned to open (although this is hard to believe looking at the status of the construction) this May. Jeffrey gave me a shtick to play with throughout the show. I kept asking him to tell us about some of the dishes her plans to serve, and he refused to come up with a single one. But I understand this. In the days before openeing a new restaurant, the owners speand most of their time getting permits, hiring people, setting up accounts with purveyors and a million other details. The menus are often not constructed until a few days before.
Well, at least he will have something solid to serve at the Chef's Soiree this Sunday. He and a few other chefs showed up to talk about that. And so did a few more restaurant people whose food would create the right mood for the Lark In The Park, another fundraiser occurring this Friday night at City Park.
Representing the latter event was Chef Michael Gulotta, who for the past few years has been chef de cuisine (the top man in the kitchen, other than the otherwise-engaged owner and executive chef John Besh) at Restaurant August. He has gone from that lofty perch to his own place, a very casual, more-or-less Vietnamese MoPho. It's in the strip mall across the street from the old Bud's Broiler on City Park Avenue. An instant success, MoPho has not only brought in a strong regular clientele, but a lot of curious chefs as well.
This weekend will also have at least one Irish and one Italian parade--after only a single parade-free weekend since Mardi Gras. Lent is getting squeezed this year.
To dinner at Orleans Bistro in Metairie, less than a week since my last visit there. Trying to get a column done before leaving town this Saturday. First course, the soup that caught my attention here some months ago, a creamy oyster-artichoke bisque. It was a little too creamy, I thought, but there are worse sins, and it was still enjoyable.
Next, an Italian salad, with not only olives and roasted bell peppers, but also salami, provolone, and mozzarella. Large enough to make a meal unto itself, but I kept on going anyway with a roast beef poor boy. Too big, of course. I brought the second half home with me. I planned on eating only half of the first half, but I wound up packing the whole thing away. I would live to regret this the next day (but not for the reason you're thinking, and no fault of the restaurant).
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014.
Ouch. New Orleans Food And Spirits Enhances Its Menu.
I awakened in the middle of the night with an ache in my left knee and hip. It was even worse when I got up for good at six-thirty. It felt like the gout, but I have not had the malaise get me in those places before. But the gout pills made the pain go away, so I will assume that's what it was. Must have been that roast beef poor boy that triggered it.
The loss of buffers is the worst part of getting older. Everything you do seems to get a rebuttal from your body.
The Mays and I went for dinner to New Orleans Food and Spirits. The chef of their Harvey location was on the radio with me yesterday, and told us that all three of the restaurants are upgrading their menus to include an oyster bar, a grill for those oysters (Drago's now-famous original dish creates another imitator), and a pizza oven whose pies are topped with some highly unusual ingredients, with an emphasis on seafood.
We called for a dozen of the grilled oysters, which had too much parmesan cheese over the shell (a minor flaw, I think, in the recipe) but were otherwise delicious. Mary Leigh ordered a cup of gumbo but sent it back: its was the seafood kind, and she wanted the chicken-andouille version.
Mary Ann pays more attention to the dishes she sees other diners eating than to the menu. Tonight, the sight of an eggplant dish at the next table grabbed here, even though she's not really a big fan of eggplant. It involved "Lafayette sauce," a proprietary concoction of the F&S kitchen, but familiar enough: seafood, cream and Cajun seasoning are the main ingredients. It proved to be as good as it looked.
For me, the Wednesday special--the one Jude always loved, but didn't often get, because we don't come here very much on Wednesdays. I ordered it in honor of our far-away son. It was good beyond belief. Again, nothing complicated: a breast of very deftly panneed chicken (with a well-browned, toasty bread crumb coating), sitton atop a pile of angel hair pasta tossed with both a red sauce and a cream sauce. This was magical, and at $10 a copy (and you get a salad too) one of the best bargains I've made in a restaurant lately.
New Orleans Food & Spirits. Covington: 208 Lee Lane. 985-875-0432.
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