[title type="h5"]Tuesday, March 3,2015.
Eat Fit NOLA. Casablanca.[/title]
My radio show, while entirely given over to matters of eat and drink, covers the health issues in food only incidentally. I have nothing against food that's overtly good for you, but I am persuaded that if you limit yourself only to the most satisfying, delicious food in appropriate quantities, one will live long and prosper.
But every now and then we have the likes of Molly Kimball in front of one of our microphones. She is always welcome because, as knowledgeable about dietetics as she is (she is fully certified in all the major professional qualifications), she is a charming talker and just plain beautiful, even on the radio.
She has an upcoming program in which she and her associates at Ochsner Clinic have restaurants reworking their recipes so as to make them more salubrious. I don't shop menus looking for the dishes that have the EatFitNola logo, but I do pay attention to them, if for no reason other than to get some cues for my own recipes.
She has asked some of the chefs who work with her program to join us. They are interesting enough that all of them would be welcome.
One of these guys has an interesting new restaurant in Old Metairie. For about three years, Brad McGehee transformed the kitchen of Ye Olde College Inn into the best restaurant operating under that name in its history. Who ever would have guessed that you could get beef Wellington there?
A few months ago, Brad departed the College Inn to open a breakfast and sandwich shop in the space that formerly (and for a long time) was the Great Wall Chinese restaurant. The name catches my interest: The Blue Line Sandwich Company. The Blue Line was a streetcar that ran on Metairie Road in the early 1900s, after running from the river along Napoleon Avenue. I never heard of it, but the rails are still visible here and there along Metairie Road.
This new café has already proven very successful. Particularly the breakfast part of it. They're on a waiting list almost from the moment they open at seven in the morning. The menu mixes the simple and the complex, with more than a few offbeat items.
Another breakfast specialist, the Ruby Slipper is represented at the Round Table by Rob Vance. His interesting statement is that not only do his four locations look different (one is in a big old former bank lobby; another is in the longtime McCrory's on Canal Street), but the clienteles are different, too. All are quite popular. For the first time in decades, our city has a substantial resource of breakfast places.
Sara Toth, executive chef of Dickie Brennan's Steak House, is here from that establishment. I am happy to learn that the long-running one-pound hamburger has departed DB's menu. Someone clearly came to his or her senses, but it wasn't Sara. I'm also happy to know that the Steakhouse and the Bourbon House will combine forces to serve barbecue shrimp and prime ribeye debris sandwiches at the French Quarter Festival in about a month. Those two may be the best eats at the FQF.
All of these restaurants put a smile on Molly Kimball's face, because all of them have EatFitNola items on their menus. Jason Baas of The Franklin is the odd man out, if only because it hasn't been open long enough for such special menu items to well up. Unfortunately, I haven't been there yet, which gives me little to say. However, Jason seems to be happy with the review The Franklin got here in the Menu Daily, written by our first-ever freelance critic, Beth d'Addono. (Gee, I wonder where she's been lately. Why is it so hard to find restaurant critics for us to engage?)
To dinner at Casablanca, where I have not been in quite a long time. Linda Waknin sees me enter and rushes over with a hug and a Where Have You Been? I know it's been too long since I've spoken with someone when he or she can't grasp the fact that Jude is now married.
The soup of the day is split pea. Casablanca makes great soups, and this one is my favorite, made with a vegetable stock. I am a third of the way through it when I remember that I am not supposed to eat legumes this week, in advance of The Procedure. The instruction sheet specifically bans peas. Drat! The soup was delicious, too.
[caption id="attachment_46872" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Appetizers at Casablanca.[/caption]
Linda sends me a few tidbits--Moroccan cigars (ground beef wrapped in phyllo), fried kibbe with tahine, smoky baba ghanoush (they always made the best in town of that here), and hummus. Wait! Hummus is made with beans! I eat two more bites and figure it can't cause too great a problem.
[caption id="attachment_46871" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Kafta with hummus.[/caption]
The entree is kafta, a blend of lamb and beef with cracked wheat and herbs. I've had better. But by now I am getting along to full.
Linda runs a strictly kosher restaurant, and she is interested in Shaya, the new Tel Aviv-style restaurant on Magazine Street by John Besh and Alon Shaya. I don't think Shaya will be kosher, but so few restaurants are in the category that Linda can't help but be intrigued. I have little to say: the place just opened.
Dessert is a unique egg caramel custard. No dairy products are served at Casablanca, so the milk typically used in making this dessert is replaced by more egg. It's better in every way than I expect, including in its texture. I should have known. The dairy-free cheesecake here has always been good.
[title type="h5"]Casablanca. Metairie: 3030 Severn Ave. 504-888-2209. [/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Wednesday, March 4, 2015.
Lilette, For A Change.[/title]
The radio show was really jumping with callers today. It has taken awhile for former listeners in the 3-6 p.m. time block to find us again, what with our having been on noon-3 p.m. for a year. But they are back, especially on slow news days. My main competitor for my kind of listeners is NPR.
Mary Ann still doesn't claim to be a gourmet, but she has come a long way in being open to a bigger menu of acceptable food. What makes me think this is that she suggested that we go to Lilette for dinner tonight. Lilette starts with a French background and uses offbeat building blocks to construct its house of dining. But MA still finds quite a few items that intrigue her, and not from the fish-with-crabmeat category, either.
[caption id="attachment_46870" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lilette.[/caption]
She and I both note that the service staff is much different from what it was when Chef John Harris opened his place some dozen years ago. There was a kind of millennial quality in the attitude that I found a little grating. All of that seems to be gone now, replaced by a strong belief in the chef's abilities. That's easy to take, because the chef is indeed as good as they say.
There is something else I like about the first impression tonight. The place isn't jammed. That is especially important because, true to MA's improvisational preferences, we arrive without reservations. The waiter says that it has been a very busy time since the first of the year, and tonight is the first slack they've seen in a while.
[caption id="attachment_46867" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pork belly and beans.[/caption]
An amuse-bouche appears and disappears, leaving a good taste in our mouths but no memory of what it was. (Aren't amuses bouche always like that?) Mary Ann remembers that good frites are here, and we have a bowl full of them with the opening shot of wine. We each eat more than our share (it was a big bowl). Then two appetizers that would seem switched to anyone who knows our very different appetites. I have the Italian wedding soup--a light, herbal vegetable soup with veal meatballs, perfect for a chilly night. She has the braised pork belly with beans.
[caption id="attachment_46866" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Drumfish and Mayer lemon yogurt.[/caption]
We return to mutual predictability in the entrees. For MA, a meaty fillet of drum, roasted to a pretty crust on top, with couscous underneath and a dollop of Mayer lemon yogurt over the top. This is nothing but wonderful.
[caption id="attachment_46865" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Squab.[/caption]
I have half a grilled squab, which presents the usual problem of extracting the meat rom the bones. Lilette doesn't have steak knives--the usual story about how their beef is so tender it can be cut with a butter knife. But a pointy-ended blade (which they were able to dig up after I asked for it) makes eating something like this pigeon a lot easier. In any case, it remains my favorite edible bird.
Except for the part of the conversation in which I am once again revealed as not enough like Mary Ann, we have a pleasant, almost romantic dinner, with perhaps too much focus in my mind on The Procedure next Monday. But I can hardly fault her for not wanting to hear about that.
[title type="h5"]Lilette. Uptown: 3637 Magazine. 504-895-1636. [/title]
