Tuesday, March 28, 2017.
Jones From P.J.'s. Tim Laughlin Comes From Maison Dupuy.
I first met jazz clarinetist Tim Laughlin some twenty years ago, during his long stint at the Hilton Riverside Hotel. That hotel was also home base for Pete Fountain. It was hard to avoiding a comparison between the two players, with Laughlin (pronounced lock-lin) often identified as Pete's protégé. I was about to bring that up myself when Laughlin visited the radio show today. He was with the people from the Bistreaux in the Maison Dupuy hotel. That hostelry has a monthly beer tasting with music, and this is the night for it.
Anyway, Tim admits that Pete was indeed an influence on his playing, but that he had quite a few other influences. Wherever it came from, it's good stuff, a point well made by his latest CD, a couple of cuts from which we spiced up the show.
The first half of the show was taken up with a visit from Felton Jones, the roastmaster for PG's Coffee. Felton always pops in when he has a new flavor to discuss. This one is Southern Pecan, which has more than a suggestion of the nut than I expected. Another new flavored coffee is Red Velvet, not something I suspected could be made into a coffee.
I gave Felton my usual strong suggestion that PJ's adds coffee and chicory with hot milk as a full-time item in the coffeehouses. He surprised me by saying ths P&J's will shortly do that very thing. After all, they were already roasting a chicory blend for PJ's supermarket line. Now we're getting somewhere.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2017.
Johnny Sanchez Revisited.
Mary Ann is lonely this week. Our daughter Mary Leigh has been asked to extend her stay working on a big design project in Orlando. She is deemed to be the key artisan at the current stage of polishing. All her co-workers have returned to New Orleans, while she continues more or less solo, with a couple of management types overlooking the work.
Meanwhile, MA is spending most of her day in ML's apartment. Her job there is to take the dog Bauer out for walks.
At the end of my day of radio, MA calls to make plans for dinner. We settle on Johnny Sanchez. This is one of John Besh's newest restaurants, a kicky Mexican place with the culture supplied by Aron Sanchez, Besh's partner in the deal.
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Johnny Sanchez's dining room.[/caption]
I was impressed by my first visit to the restaurant, the day the place opened. (MA wanted badly to go there. She loves Besh. And she persuaded me to leave my disdain for new restaurants behind.) I went one other time, and still found it unique and interesting. But it all seemed watered down tonight. Molé poblano--the best flavor in the Mexican palette, but the hardest one to actually find on a menu--appeared a few times on Johnny Sanchez's menu. But it's faded away to a single dish offered only one day a week, and then only at lunch.
Restaurateurs to whom I address this disappointing omission all tell me the same thing: molé poblano is a hard sell. Its name--the sauce of Pueblo--does sound peculiar. It's a nearly black, very thick sauce made with chile peppers, sesame, about twenty seasoning ingredients, and bitter chocolate. Chocolate on chicken? people ask. If only they'd try it with an open mind. If Houston can make molé poblano, why can't we?
Tonight I get by with chicken-tortilla soup. (What Mexican restaurant doesn't have that?). We have guacamole that is almost exclusively made of avocado. A beef burrito is as big as my fist. (Yeah, I know. How big could my fist be?)
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Ceviche and salad.[/caption]
The most interesting part of the dinner is ceviche, at $16 the order. In a time when ceviche (raw fish and shellfish bathed in a sharp marinade) is a rarity around town, I'm happy to find this. And made well, too.
Johnny Sanchez. CBD: 930 Poydras. 504-304--6615.
