Tuesday, April 25, 2017.
Chris's Meats, And Fun. A Drink @ Treo, A Supper @ Tana.
I must say I'm having a lot of fun with the guests Mary Ann has been booking for the radio show. The motivating reason for them is to have someone for me to talk with during the program. For all its many merits, our shift to HD Radio has made it mildly difficult for anyone other than an audio buff to listen to the program. And if they can't hear the show, they are less likely to call into it--even though a would-be caller needs only the telephone (504-260-6368) to connect with the conversation.
Today's guests came from Chris's Specialty Meats, a gourmet butcher on the corner of West End Boulevard and Harrison Avenue in Lakeview. It's a Baton Rouge-based operation with major roots in Cajun Country, where little butcher shops are an important part of the cooking scene.
It's always fun when the guests goof around with me. I made a good impression with the boss lady, Twyla Lauchaussee (pronounced "lah-chah-say.") by making a sidelong reference to the dancer with whom she shares her given name. Also here is head meat smoker Anthony Ford, who goes by his "Da Parish" name of "Ant-nee." Richard Graham, who plays straight man, rounds out the show.
It was a load of laughs, punctuated by tastes of boudin, smoked sausage, smoked briskets, hogshead cheese, and a few more house-made items. The shop also stocks top-end steaks, a good many game meats, and a substantial number of stuffings and side dishes.
Finally, we establish that there is no connection between Chris's Meats and Ruth's Chris Steak House.
We fill the first hour with these fun folks. Then comes another one: Mike Gowland, better known in food circles as "Fireman Mike." He really was a firefighter in New Orleans for twenty-something years. His food credentials come from cooking in a few restaurants, most notably the now-extinct but well-remembered Bozo's.
Mike has also participated in many eating contests, especially those involving eating something like a hundred raw oysters at a sitting--while beating the clock. The reason he is here, however is that he's operated a food booth at the Jazz Festival for some fifteen years. Serving food long-term at the festival is a mark of distinction, since there is almost zero turnover in the Jazz Fest's food booths. Fireman Mike's specialty is shrimp and grits, and he keeps a long line in front of his window.
Afterwards, I finally make it to a restaurant that opened last year, but whose location I had trouble reconnoitering. It's on Tulane Avenue a few outbound blocks before South Carrollton Avenue. Under its bar name "Treo" at attracts a mostly-Millennian clientele, one that uses language a bit saltier than what I'm used to.
So what was Bob Rintz doing there? He was probably asking the same question about me. Bob and I go back to 1972, when he was the business and sales honcho of the weekly newspaper Figaro. I worked there as a writer and designer. We have other social connections from the momentum of that one. Most memorable was that we both were members of Kit and Billy Wohl's "waifs and orphans" Thanksgiving gathering for many years. Most of the attendees were media people with roots from other places.
The food side of Treo is called Tana, and is inspired by Chef Michael Gullota. He has an impressive dossier, too. He's the owner of MoPho, and the new Asian restaurant MayPop. Before that, he was the chef and partner in Restaurant August, John Besh's five-star flagship restaurant.
This kind of wide-ranging skill makes for a surprising menu at Tana. Its soul seems to be Italian, but there's a lot else going on here. I began with agnolotti (little ravioli) stuffed with chicken liver pate, tossed with an assortment of lightly-cooked apples and vegetables, all awash in an intense chicken broth. It was a soup, a salad, and a pasta all in one.
I was interested in some of the other pasta dishes, but I'm on the one-pasta-per-meal diet. So next is an offbeat salad with citrus-tinged carrots and pickled beets, with cured hog's jowls and yogurt made from goat's milk. My mother gave me goat's milk when I was a baby for some health reason, so I keep getting it whenever it's within reach. This dish was a little hard to eat. I needed a spoon, and throughout the meal I never seemed to have the right utensils. Could be because the bartender took care of food service. The Manhattan he made for me was right on the money.
I felt the need to try a couple more items. From the bar snack category came fresh-fried potato chips with a pale orange aioli. And then a king of crostini topped wioth charred eggplant and ricotta. I didn't get the combo Brussels sprouts and cauliflower with harissa, but MA would have loved it.
For such an abbreviated menu, Tana nevertheless held my interest, and persuade me to find another parking spot soon and try some more of all this.
Chris's Specialty Meats. Lakeview: 6251 West End Blvd. 504-309-0010.
Tana. Mid-City: 3835 Tulane Ave. 504-304-4878.
