Tuesday, April 26, 2016.
Cold Stuff.
I am writing my bi-monthly column for Inside New Orleans, whose editor Anne Honeywell seems to like every idea I come up with. Which is about the way I've always worked with editors during the past twenty-five years or so. Fortunately, I always have four or five articles on my mind.
This one came to me about a year ago, when I noticed how often I was eating large salads and other platters of cold food in lieu of the crisp, buttery, meaty, saucy food that my palate usually demands. My appetites have clearly shifted, and not just because I'm on a long weight-loss regimen. I really do find myself imagining the platters of baby greens with poached vegetables, sprinklings of cheese and herbs, vinaigrettes, remoulade derivatives, scatterings of shrimp and crabmeat. Perhaps with a seared scallop at the top of this green hill.
And then I thought about how strange it is that in our hot climate we don't eat more cold dishes. We just keep on going with our thick, steaming gumbos and seafood platters. To say nothing of the many cuisines we find whose spice levels make our heads radiate pepper heat.
The obvious place to start this survey is with oysters. But we covered that pretty thoroughly in these pages a few months ago. So we pause for a moment to consider the nonpareil pleasure in gulping down a dozen ice-cold oysters when it's in the nineties outside. The only person who works up a sweat from that is the oyster shucker.
Instead, let's note the best and most obvious place to eat chilly food: your friendly neighborhood sushi bar. Sushi shouldn't be really cold--that would put a damper on its flavor. But a light chill is cool in every way from its arrangement on the plate (there's no missing the visual aspect of Japanese food) to the light, soothing cubes and apostophes of fish.
Let's dilate on sushi and sashimi for a moment. If ordered and prepared well, it's a study in contrasts. That begins at the beginning, when you get the cup of warm (but not often hot) clear soup. Then comes a bite of the fish, and you can't help but notice the smoothness of the transition.
Unless, that is, you dunk the fish like a doughnut into a cup of soy sauce and wasabi. My Japanese friends tsk-tsk this practice, and say that the right way to do it is to wet only a corner of the fish morsel in the salty, powerful sauce. "Otherwise it all tastes the same," they say.
The most popular form of sushi in recent times is the chef's special roll. These involve using three or four main ingredients to create a foot-long (well, almost) roll that's largely about jamming in a lot of ingredients to justify the over-$10 price. It also allows the use of other wrappers and stick-ums in lieu of just rice.
Some chef's sushi rolls are indeed good. My own favorite is the Burning Man Roll, which involves salmon and tuna with some avocado--all of which work well together in both color and flavor. The best Burning Man rolls I've had came from the Little Tokyo's several locations on both sides of the lake.
Here's how to choose other good rolls: ignore all the ones made with crabstick or crab salad, both of which are usually made with fake crabmeat.
That said, I find that the best sushi combination is called chirashi. It means "scattered." It involves three or four kinds of fish, shrimp, and that funny, sweet cool Japanese omelette. The rice is on the bottom of the dish, with the fish scattered atop. You have all the variety you want, but the elements don't get in each other's way. The best vendors of chirashi sushi are Shogun and Megumi. In the latter, the presentation is particularly stunning.
The reason I begin this examination of the scene so far from home is to note how many very New Orleans, very American restaurants are adopting sushi-like dishes into their menus. A good case in point is the local chain Zea. A few years ago Zea decided to keep one of its cool seafood summer dishes on the menu year round. The "tuna stack" is exactly that, with layers of sashimi-style tuna piled up atop avocados, with an Asian-style vinaigrette. It's one of the best eats there.
After this exotica, let's return closer to home. In the days when everyone in the New Orleans area shopped on Canal Street, Galatoire's menu included several salads that were named for the more prominent department stores. There was a Maison Blanche salad, a Holmes salad and others. Only one of these has come down to modern times. The Godchaux salad--named for a great clothing store on Baronne at Canal, the first place I ever bought my own menswear--is a large pile of iceberg greens topped with a stupendous quantity of shrimp and crabmeat, plus boiled eggs and anchovies.
At any lunch at Galatoire's, you are very likely to see many people working away at this cold plate of choice local shellfish. It's so popular that it has turned up widely on other menus around town, from Clancy's uptown to Jacmel Inn in Hammond.
But we needn't leave Galatoire's for another Creole-French chiller. The Galatoire goute (French for "tasting") is a no-brainer: shrimp remoulade, crabmeat maison (with its light, mayonnaise-and-caper sauce), and a third cold item that depends on the condition of crawfish. If they're around, the tails come out with an ivory-colored sauce. If not, that sauce winds up on more shrimp. All of these are quite enough to make a filling meal, or an appetizer for two.
Throughout the New Orleans area but particularly on the North Shore, we are seeing an efflorescence of Mexican cantinas. Although we are still far away from the Mexican food of central Texas (or Mexico City, for that matter), the quality of the Tex-Mex places has improved tremendously in recent times. Almost all of them offer some variation on ceviche, the marinated, cold seafood appetizer. It's not usually cooked, but the high-acid (lemons, mostly) marinade effectively performs the cooking.
Ceviche, grilled fish or chicken and even steak have found themselves atop big salads in the new Mexican places. Coming along for the ride is a new salad dressing: cilantro vinaigrette. The first place I found this was at La Carreta in Mandeville and Covington. Remember where you heard it: cilantro vinaigrette.
I wish I could wrap this survey with a few excellent restaurants for gazpacho, the potentially wonderful cold soup made of tomatoes and vegetables. Or of the other famous cold soup, vichyssoise. But no matter how hot it gets, New Orleans diners never get around to those two potages. If you want some, call Franklin in the Bywater, and ask when they will make gazpacho the soup of the day. And go. I've never had better than that one.
Shogun. Metairie: 2325 Veterans Blvd. 504-833-7477.
Megumi. Mandeville: 4700 Hwy 22. 985-845-1644.
Zea. Harahan: 1655 Hickory Ave. 504-738-0799. Kenner: 1325 West Esplanade Ave. 504-468-7733. Metairie: 4450 Veterans Blvd (Clearview Mall). 504-780-9090. Covington: 110 Lake Dr. 985-327-0520. Harvey: 1121 Manhattan Blvd. 504-361-8293. Slidell: 173 Northshore Blvd. 985-273-0500.
Galatoire's. French Quarter: 209 Bourbon. 504-525-2021.
Megumi. Mandeville: 4700 Hwy 22. 985-845-1644.
La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990. Also Covington: 812 Hyw 190. 985-400-5202.
Franklin. Marigny: 2600 Dauphine. 504-267-0640.
