[title type="h5"]Friday, March 27, 2015.
Why Don't We Eat Here More Often, Episode #5702.[/title]
I drove into downtown every day so far this week, so I see no reason to worry about whether my fellow employees at the radio station think I'm a goldbrick for broadcasting today's show from home. Why I should feel guilty about this after twenty years is a mystery.
Likewise, Mary Ann can't think of a reason why we shouldn't go to Lola for dinner. It's a restaurant about which our inevitable finishing comment is, Why don't we eat here more often? One reason is that they're only open for dinner Friday and Saturday. And that if we try to just walk in, we might find the restaurant full.
It's a lovely night for Lola. The attraction for Mary Ann is that the building--a renovated railroad depot dating back to the early decades of the 1900s--uses the open platform for outdoor dining. It's a little chilly outside, and MA decides that she will allow our sitting indoors tonight. Especially since Mary Leigh is scantily clad.
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Hand-cut fries.[/caption]The menu is short, but we always want to order everything on it. Tonight the appetizer selection includes four different oyster treatments, all of them tempting, both to my oyster-loving palate, but that of my increasingly oyster-loving wife. (When we first met twenty-seven years ago, she hardly ever touched them.)
The oysters I settle on are fried and deposited atop a salad, sprinkled with feta cheese, with small cubes of lean pork belly strewn about. This is just great, with a borderline sizzle.
Before that came out we started with glasses of wine and a cone of hand-cut, truffled fries. ML says she doesn't really like the flavor of white truffles. Good! More for me.
I follow that with a zingy vegetable soup. Then with an appetizer of raw salmon, topped with pickled red onions and a cheese-sharpened bed of very soft rice. Very light, very good.
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Fried oysters with pork belly.[/caption]
That's three appetizers for me. Why? Because the fish of the day is a very handsome fillet of sheepshead. I have convinced MA that sheepshead is a great eating fish. This sample was especially appetizing: pan-seared to a turn by Keith or Nealy Frentz (Mr. and Mrs. Chefs), with some shrimp and quartered potatoes in a butter sauce, and a fluffy, herbal cream atop all.
[caption id="attachment_47127" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Sheepshead with shrimp.[/caption]
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Italian cream cake at Lola.[/caption]For dessert, an Italian cream cake with the texture of a corrot cake. I haven't seen one of these in a long time.
Meanwhile, ML eats a salad. She says she's not feeling well. I think I know why: the trip to Germany and the Czech Republic that the girls are taking next week. The plan--if it can even be called that--sounds very sketchy to me. Everything is on standby. How can Mary Ann sleep nights with this sort of thing hanging over her head? ML is reluctant about the idea, but there's nothing she can do but go.
[title type="h5"]Lola. Covington: 517 N New Hampshire. 985-892-4992. [/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris April 03, 2015 12:01 in
