Good Friday, March 25, 2016.
Pile Of Oysters With Pecan Meuniere.
The radio show is cut short by an hour on behalf of a basketball game. When that happens on a Friday, with its usual large load of commercials, the content of the program is attenuated. I don't know where I might go for dinner in town anyway. So I remain on the North Shore, after a lunch of fried oysters with pecan meuniere sauce at New Orleans Food & Spirits. This is a variation on a catfish dish I had here about a week ago and very much liked. There is no small oyster platter here, so I eat the standard-size pile. Too much food, but this is the only meal I will eat today.
While eating, I read an excerpt of a memoir by the exemplary New Yorker Magazine writer Joseph Mitchell. I have read several of his books about the seamy side of New York in the 1930s through the 1960s. His craftsmanship to this day inspires writers at the New Yorker and, indirectly, me.
But Mitchell had a problem. In the mid-1960s, although he continued to show up at the office and put in a full day every day, he never published another piece for the New Yorker. I think he was spooked by his last big story, about a character who said he was writing the history of the world, but who was actually writing the same page over and over again. Every now and then I get the feeling that the same thing might happen to me. But I don't think I'm good enough, so for now I feel safe.
After today's two-thirds of a radio show, I find in my mail a note from Natalie Chandler, the editor of CityBusiness. She asked whether I would have a column for the April 1 edition. Ah! I have to do that. But I have never met Natalie or been in the CityBusiness office for many years. I hunker down and write the subject article, then send it to Natalie within a couple of hours. I check with her to see whether she is aware of the special nature of my column on that date. It's a certain literary approach that I've taken every year since 1981 in the business newspaper, and before that in Figaro in the 1970s. (CityBusiness was originally a spinoff of Figaro, as was Gambit.) The column will appear here in the New Orleans Menu Daily on the ordained date.
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Saturday, March 26, 2016.
Eighty And Smiling. Bourré.
My big sister Judy's husband Walter turns eighty today. A party is hosted by his daughter (and my goddaughter) Holly. The entire Baby Boom generation of Walter and Judy's family is there save one who lives in Seattle. Generation X is missing five of its twelve members (three live on the West Coast, one is in Washington, D.C., and the fifth is having twins imminently). If I count right, five of the Millennials--most of them tweeners and twenty-somethings--are here today except for Jude's five-month-old son Jackson. I know about three-fourths of all these people, which makes this a pretty successful party. If I make it to eighty, I hope this many family people show up for the party.
The party is in late morning, and I don't want to hang out on the South Shore for the radio show (two until four) or waiting for dinner (four till sixish). I head back home at noon, do the radio show from home, take a five-lap walk (the woods trail that would add another half-mile is dotted with deep puddles), take a shower, then a nap before dinner rolls around.
My only meal of the day is at Bourré, a well-hidden, fairly new restaurant in Mandeville. There's something about the place that feels inviting, and most of that is in the bar. It's separated from the main dining room by a wall that allows conversations to be heard on the other side, particularly if one's voice carries, as did the voice of one guy who spoke continuously through the hour and a half I am there.
Also carrying well from the bar (which connects with the kitchen) is music playing on a lo-fi sound system, playing what I will just say is not my kind of music. But what gives me the right to pick the music in an eatery? Sometimes I think it may be time for juke boxes to make a comeback.
[caption id="attachment_51106" align="alignnone" width="480"]
French onion soup at Bourre in Mandeville.[/caption]
The first time I dined at Bourré, I was impressed by several items. First was the French onion soup, whose onion content was caramelized nicely, served very hot, and topped with a sort of floating cheese biscuit. That soup was here again tonight, and it is exactly as fine as it was the first time. It may, in fact, be the best onion soup in the metro area. I say that with a hint of a suspicion that this may have been prepared elsewhere. But if it tastes good, it is good, and this does.
[caption id="attachment_51105" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A salad of baby greens, satsuma sections, cashews, and blue cheese.[/caption]
The menu at first glance seems to be that of a gourmet bistro.
But hamburgers take up a lot of the entree list, whose other offerings include the likes of blackened chicken, a fish or two, a steak, a double-cut pork chop. On my other dinner here I had the pork chop, which was very good. Tonight--the sun having gone down on the absolute last day of Lent, and my having limited my diet to seafood through most of the penitential season--I have the filet mignon.
[caption id="attachment_51104" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Six-ounce filet mignon at Bourre.[/caption]
The plate includes three items: some very good, fresh, perfectly cooked asparagus spears, a six-ounce filet cooked not medium rare as I asked, but medium well--although it could pass for just-plain well-done if Mary Ann, who likes steaks that way, had been with me.
I think about sending the filet back, but that would have required the grilling of a new steak from scratch, and I am about at my limit of listening to that guy and that music in the bar.
[caption id="attachment_51103" align="alignnone" width="439"]
Bread pudding at Bourre.[/caption]
The ball of mashed potatoes are terrible. But dessert ticks up again, with a well-made, very ample, soft, fluffy pudding with ice cream and whipped cream made it a total caloric disaster, but delicious to eat.
And yet. . . Instead of writing the place off, my feeling is that if they polished the cooking and added more variety to the menu, this could become a very good restaurant. The main dining room is spare but comfortable. The fact that Bourré is a little hard to find the first time you look for it isn't helping, either.
After the radio show, I get to work on a few glitches in the web site. I am proud of myself for being able to figure out how ti fix the problems on my own. I am a little vexed that one of the projects took the rest of the evening. I smoothed out the irritation with a Scotch and soda. Not a single malt, but a twelve-year-old Ballantine's blended whisky. Not bad. And it had me singing the Kingston Trio's song on the subject:
Scotch and soda
Mud in your eye
Baby do I feel high on you!
Oh, my! Do I feel high.
Bourre. Mandeville: 22 St. Ann Dr. 985-778-2601.
French onion soup at Bourre in Mandeville.[/caption]
The first time I dined at Bourré, I was impressed by several items. First was the French onion soup, whose onion content was caramelized nicely, served very hot, and topped with a sort of floating cheese biscuit. That soup was here again tonight, and it is exactly as fine as it was the first time. It may, in fact, be the best onion soup in the metro area. I say that with a hint of a suspicion that this may have been prepared elsewhere. But if it tastes good, it is good, and this does.
[caption id="attachment_51105" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A salad of baby greens, satsuma sections, cashews, and blue cheese.[/caption]
The menu at first glance seems to be that of a gourmet bistro.
But hamburgers take up a lot of the entree list, whose other offerings include the likes of blackened chicken, a fish or two, a steak, a double-cut pork chop. On my other dinner here I had the pork chop, which was very good. Tonight--the sun having gone down on the absolute last day of Lent, and my having limited my diet to seafood through most of the penitential season--I have the filet mignon.
[caption id="attachment_51104" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Six-ounce filet mignon at Bourre.[/caption]
The plate includes three items: some very good, fresh, perfectly cooked asparagus spears, a six-ounce filet cooked not medium rare as I asked, but medium well--although it could pass for just-plain well-done if Mary Ann, who likes steaks that way, had been with me.
I think about sending the filet back, but that would have required the grilling of a new steak from scratch, and I am about at my limit of listening to that guy and that music in the bar.
[caption id="attachment_51103" align="alignnone" width="439"]
Bread pudding at Bourre.[/caption]
The ball of mashed potatoes are terrible. But dessert ticks up again, with a well-made, very ample, soft, fluffy pudding with ice cream and whipped cream made it a total caloric disaster, but delicious to eat.
And yet. . . Instead of writing the place off, my feeling is that if they polished the cooking and added more variety to the menu, this could become a very good restaurant. The main dining room is spare but comfortable. The fact that Bourré is a little hard to find the first time you look for it isn't helping, either.
After the radio show, I get to work on a few glitches in the web site. I am proud of myself for being able to figure out how ti fix the problems on my own. I am a little vexed that one of the projects took the rest of the evening. I smoothed out the irritation with a Scotch and soda. Not a single malt, but a twelve-year-old Ballantine's blended whisky. Not bad. And it had me singing the Kingston Trio's song on the subject:
Scotch and soda
Mud in your eye
Baby do I feel high on you!
Oh, my! Do I feel high.
