[title type="h5"]Friday, April 24, 2015.
N'Tini's. In The Rain.[/title]
The two Eat Club dinners this week give me permission to stay at home for the radio show today. The management doesn't care, but my readers do, and unless I claim the three hours lost in the commute across the lake, I will fall behind my deadlines.
Besides, it's raining. It doesn't look like a good weekend for the Jazz Festival. But I hear the show has gone on anyway.
The Boy meets up with some college friends he hasn't seen in awhile. They hang out in the traditional way of twenty-something men until the wee hours. He wisely spends the night at the home of one of his buds instead of driving across the Causeway. Mary Leigh isn't available, anyway: her job at Sucre eats a big part of the day.
She gets home around the time I finish the radio show. The usual period of indecision as to where to have dinner passes, and we wind up at N'Tini's. Haven't been there in awhile. It's also the first time we've seen owner Mark Benfatti in many months. Mary Ann asks him to guest host the radio show while we are on the Eat Club cruise to Europe next month. He's happy to perform.
[caption id="attachment_37955" align="alignleft" width="220"]
Mark Benfatti, owner of N'Tini's.[/caption]
We have a mostly-appetizer dinner. I start with a way-too-big ceviche, with lots of fish and shellfish, marinated vegetables and fruit. I am the only one at the table who will eat ceviche, or anything that touched ceviche. I could have stopped eating right there, but I don't. Instead, I have a small filet mignon with a half-dozen grilled oysters lined up in back of it. The flavors of oysters and beef go very well together. So do steak and garlic butter. And garlic butter with oysters. How could this be anything but a winner? I tell Mark Benfatti that he ought to put this on the menu. Only problem: it's $36.
Meanwhile, the Marys eat chicken-andouille gumbo and house salads. I have the only dessert, of course: creme brulee, a bit too sweet but otherwise enjoyable.
[title type="h5"]N'Tini's. Mandeville: 2891 US 190. 985-626-5566. [/title][divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Saturday, April 25, 2015.
Breakfast. No Show. Much Rain.[/title]
Mary Ann volunteers to join me for breakfast at Mattina Bella. I'm always ready to go for that, even though there is almost always a political argument on the way home. That's how good breakfast is in that antique cafe room in old Covington.
I have the best dish in the house, one I suggested to them: lump crabmeat and mushrooms sautedd in butter, then sandwiched between the English muffins and the poached eggs, with hollandaise flowing throughout. This is surely the best breakfast dish served on the North Shore.
[caption id="attachment_36642" align="alignleft" width="400"]
Poached eggs with crabmeat and mushrooms at Mattina Bella.[/caption]
I have no radio show today. With those three hours free, I consider whether to cut the grass for the first time this year. It surely needs to be cut, but the heavy rain of the past couple of months make getting stuck in the mud almost a certainty. But before I can head out to buy gas for the tractor, it starts raining again, with ever more gusto moment by moment. So much for that idea. I can't even take a decent walk in this marsh.
All this failure to perform my usual Saturday routines makes me especially look forward to dinner with the Fowlers tonight. They are people whose paths have crossed those of our family many times, usually in a way that defies logic. The most peculiar coincidence took place after Katrina, when our family lived in the Washington, D.C. area for between five weeks (me) and three years (Jude). At the time, the Fowlers lived in the area, following Michael Fowler's banking career. Veronica Fowler one day volunteered to pick up Mary Leigh from school. Also in that carpool was The Boy--seven years before Mary Leigh would meet him at Tulane and Loyola (the universities, not the avenues), beginning the great romance of her life.
Veronica roasted some filets mignon with a well-seasoned topping and a decent pan sauce she let me prepare. My other donation to the night's pleasures are a bottle of Taittinger Champagne and a 2006 Estancia Cabernet. ML and The Boy were also in attendance (they were sort of the guests of honor), although they drifted off into their own conversation, leaving the dining room free for politics to come out and add tension for the second time today. Oh, well. I'm sure we aren't the only ones.
[title type="h5"]Mattina Bella. Covington: 421 E Gibson. 985-892-0708.[/title]
