[title type="h5"]Tuesday, April 21, 2015.
Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar[/title]
Mary Ann has no real Round-Table radio show guests lined up for me. She's still catching up after her two weeks in Germany two weeks ago. It's raining too hard for me to ask someone to come into the studio, anyway.
And she and the other Mary have other matters on their minds. Today, The Boy pulled in at the Cool Water Ranch. He is driving from his parents' home in Baltimore (good thing he got out of there right now, what with the violence spreading through the city). He will stay here a few days, then continue west to Tucson, Arizona, where he will begin Army basic training, in fulfillment of his ROTC deal.
To dinner at Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar And Fish Grill, #1. The second location of that long-named restaurant is in the French Quarter. I pass in front of it often en route to other restaurants. They seem busy. Unless the goal is to rope in the crowd that stands in front of the Acme Oyster House. I don't know what it would take to bring in such volume.
But this dinner is at the Metairie MEOBAFG (even the acronym makes for a long name, but at least it's not a number). It's best referred to as The Place That Used To Be Bozo's. (MEOBAFG-TPTUTBB? Sounds like a held-back sneeze.)
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Soft-shell crab amandine @ Mr. Ed's Oyster Bar[/caption]
The oyster bar is a great place to start, and I did with a half-dozen raw. Big and good. Then a soft-shell crab amandine. It's not on the menu, but soft-shells are now reliably available as this year's season swings into deliciousness. And the recipe is an adaptation of one of the oyster appetizers.
It includes meuniere sauce--the thick, medium-brown sauce invented long ago by Arnaud's and adopted by many other restaurants since then. The dish is excellent except for the sauce, in which about I find an increasingly common problem: chefs are making roux too thick, with an unappealing, glutinous texture. It is true of the sauce tonight. Of the turtle soup from the Court of Two Sisters at the French Quarter Festival two weeks ago. Of the escargots bordelaise at Antoine's a week before that. Of the gumbo ya-ya at Mr. B's (!) a few months ago. And at least a dozen more that I noticed but failed to write down. (I can say that several of the examples involve gumbo.)
I hereby begin a crusade against overly gooey roux. I will start a brown list. (Like a black list, but not as heinous.) Readers and radio listeners are asked to inform me of examples of too-thick, too-dark roux. It's a problem that will, if it gets out of control, kick the foundations out from under Creole cooking. Send reports to tom@nomenu.com.
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[title type="h5"]Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
Eat Club Convenes @ Impastato Cellars.
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The actual cellars at Impastato Cellars. They're soon to add tables in here. [/caption]We began the broadcast from Impastato Cellars in Madisonville with a total of only twenty-six Eat Clubbers signed up for tonight's dinner. I think I know why. It's less than a month since the last time we did this at this exact restaurant. Even though about half the menu items are different from last time, that leaves the other half the same. Also, I think the price is a shade high at $85.
I was under the impression that I had to run my own electronics at the site, but engineer Dominic Mitchum--who becomes a co-host whenever he handles the gadgets at my remotes--tells me he's there for the duration. I'm happy to hear that. How did I handle my own production in the first ten years of my career as a talk show host? I didn't even have anybody to answer the phone back then.
By some miracle, by the time the radio show ends and the first few diners arrive for our dinner, we have forty-seven people in the house. That's more than last time! Good fun-seeking crowd, too.
As often happens as I perform my hosting duties, I get only one bite of the first course, off Mary Ann's plate. It's a cannelloni stuffed with crabmeat and shrimp in a cream sauce. Whoever takes that as his or her starter surely is happy. Next comes square-cut spaghetti, made in house, with a texture that reminds me of the way it used to be at Mosca's, when Mamma Mosca cut her pasta on a chittera. That literally means "guitar," because of its resemblance to the intrument. It's a board strung with tight, thin wires. The pasta dough is pushed through this and comes out uniformly thin. At the table, it sports a creamy sauce with crawfish and just enough red sauce to make it pale orange. Wonderful. Ate enough of it to make for a full meal.
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A textbook example of well-marbled ribeye beef steaks, at Impastato's.[/caption]
Joe Impastato has some stunningly well marbled ribeye steaks. I almost get that for the entree, but it seems that lots of people are going that way. I order the pork spiedini. I get three of them, thick wrappers of roast pork enclosing bread crumbs, garlic, olive oil, herbs, and ham. This is seriously good, but fills one up quickly. I can only finish one of them.
I learn something tonight about Joe and Mica Impastato's long, happy marriage. They met at La Louisiane back in the 1970s. I knew Joe was there then, but I didn't know that Mica was in charge of Jimmy Moran's pasta-making operation at La Louisiane. That explains a lot of the goodness of the Impastatos' superb pasta.
[title type="h5"]Impastato Cellars. Madisonville: 240 Highway 22 E. 985-845-4445. [/title]
