Monday, April 10, 2017.
Back To Normal, But Tuckered Out.
I don't often awaken tired. I almost always have a great night's sleep, and I'm always eager to jump out of bed at around six-thirty and get with the process of writing a few thousand words.
But that was a rough, relentless weekend just past. And I can only wonder how the vendors at the French Quarter Festival feel.
I shift my gist around by having breakfast in late morning, at the Fat Spoon. A fancy egg dish catches my attention. They call it eggs Florentine, which means nothing much more than that there is some spinach in there. What appears is a large order of well-made creamed spinach is enriched by folding soft-scrambled eggs into it. Three strips of bacon and two slices of whole-wheat toast end it all deliciously.
[caption id="attachment_53115" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Eggs Sardou @ Fat Spoon.[/caption]
It brings to mind a matter I have not brought up before. The marker dish for chain restaurants is spinach-artichoke dip. It is sold so widely that most restaurants serving spin-dip (as it's called these days) use it in more than one guise. It is especially common in restaurants with eggs Sardou. The recipe for most eggs Sardou manifestations include spinach and artichokes. So why not just open the coast-to-coast pipeline of spinach-artichoke dip and save a few steps? Why indeed.
I am no fan of spin-dip. (MA says that it's evidence of my ongoing food snobbery.) Yet I love eggs Sardou. (At this time we interrupt the screed by noting that the original eggs Sardou created by Antoine's never did have spinach in it--just artichokes and hollandaise.)
Getting back to the Fat Spoon: this new egg dish of theirs is better than I expect, and I had it figured for something very good. I love when that happens. And with that breakfast under my belt, I'm ready to finish the day without eating another meal.
Tuesday, April 11, 2017.
Best Chefs In Louisiana.
When I arrive at the radio station today, I find that nearly everybody on the staff is waiting to tell me about an urgent phone call from Chef T, the main organizer of the Best Chefs In Louisiana, to get in touch with him ASAP. Those who don't bear that message want me to record two commercials before I go on the air. But my professors in the UNO Communications Department always said that all radio and television operations are normally in a state of crisis.
It turns out that Chef T's crisis is that he needed me to show up at the Lakefront Airport by six-thirty. That's where and when the Best Chefs in Louisiana program and party get rolling. I have almost always been the emcee of this, although in recent years I've shared the job with other luminaries in the America Culinary Federation, the chef's association that puts on this event every year for the last seven.
I arrive with time to spare. I make a tour of the food booths scattered throughout the airport's exquisite Art Deco terminal. Here an assortment of young and old chefs knock themselves out making beautiful, up-to-date eats. This is one of the best food-grazing event of the year and a steal at $100. I eat very well and talk to chefs I haven't seen lately.
The band that takes up a third of the floor in the terminal is a first-class music association, but it has one big problem. The volume is excruciatingly loud, at least to my ears. This makes it hard to say anything more than hello. We get them to stop when we begin the awards presentation. The recipient of the big award of the night is Leah Chase, the genius of Dooky Chase's restaurant. Miss Leah is in her nineties and doesn't get around easily anymore. And day after tomorrow she will expound her big public feed of the year when she makes tanker cars full of her definitive gumbo z'herbes. It's the busiest day of the year for Dooky's.
I am asked to introduce her, which is my pleasure, even though I know that Miss Leah has a sharper intellect than I do. (I have been on panels with her, and that is clear.) No matter what I said, she would top it, in a humble way. She deserves all the honors she gets. Which is a lot of them.
I have been on my feet for three hours when I sneak out the back door and find yet a few more chef teams cooking up still more good things. Grilled oysters from the Upperline are the most impressive.
Last year--the first time the Best Chefs had its party at the Lakefront Airport--I got lost looking for my car in the total darkness. To keep that from happening again, while the sun is still out I see that a sidewalk goes straight from my car to the terminal building. This time, I walk the deep darkness again, but the sidewalk keeps me well aimed--until a twig hanging low grazes my forehead. You would think that a former Scout would remember to carry a flashlight. Mary Ann says to use my cellphone. I don't bother telling her that the formula for turning the light on is so complex that one needs a light to puzzle it out.
