Saturday, May 30, 2016.
Dubious Celebrity Waiter.
The gloomy weather continues. We pick the perfect place for seeing just how bad it looks: the patio in front of Forks & Corks in Covington. A big spread of undeveloped lawn gives onto a big view of the darkening sky. On a sunny day, this would afford a view as cheerful as today's is forbidding. Soon enough, it is actually raining, with the drops and the menus blowing around. All this so Mary Ann may sit outdoors!
We are joined by our friends Chuck and Desiree Billeaud, whose grown-up kids are around the same ages as ours. When all the kids were at Our Lady of the Lake School, we saw a lot of one another. Now they, like us, are keeping track of their daughters' progress while figuring out what else life holds in the future.
We could very easily move indoors with our lunch, but we brush away the raindrops while the girls eat various salads. I begin with a bowl of F&C's great turtle soup. I see that they've changed the bowl so that the serving is closer to normal than the half-buckets of soup they originally served.
I am the only one here who likes turtle soup. I'm surprised that Chuck--who is an undeniable Cajun from Broussard--doesn't go for it. Later in our conversation, Chuck lets on that he is not really a true Acadian, but a descendent of a French family that moved to Cajun country long after the big Acadian exile in the 1700s. Desiree, on the other hand, says that she does have some Cajun blood.
To find out all this after all these years!
Desiree looks terrific, having lost many pounds. MA is jealous, sort if, but she has her own program going, and it seems to be working. That subject fills a lot of time.
Back to eating, I have as my entree a dish called barbecue shrimp in the headline of the menu, but shrimp and grits in the fine print. No problem: I like both dishes, if not equally. I think barbecue shrimp is one of the four or five best dishes in all of New Orleans cookery. Shrimp and grits--a recent borrowing from the Carolinas--is good, but not as good as BBQ shrimp the way Mr. B's or Emeril's cook it. However, a lot of restaurants in these parts--Forks and Corks included-- make shrimp and grits using a barbecue shrimp sauce. That adds a new and delicious dimension. I must have liked it, because when MA forked around in my bowl, she found no uneaten shrimp. And I almost always save lots of shrimp for her.
I am surprised to see Forks & Corks open for lunch on a Saturday, when most restaurants above the quick-eats level are closed. They weren't very busy. I have been suggesting that they open on Sunday night instead, when few if any first-class dining rooms are open--not even Osman Rodas's other restaurant Pardo's.
I have no radio show this week. The NFL Draft pre-empts me, but what doesn't? I'd cut the grass, but it's too wet--not even considering the new rainfall this dark afternoon.
At five, I cross the lake to the Hilton Hotel at the Airport--a long-running property I remember as being under construction when I lived four blocks away at age seven. It's bigger than I thought, and it's a good thing it is, because tonight's event takes up the entirety of the Hilton's grand ballroom, and all the adjacent meeting rooms.
A few weeks ago Brother Gale Condit--the president of Archbishop Rummel High School--called me to ask if I would be a celebrity waiter at the annual fundraising gala and auction. Brother Gale, who has crossed my path many times over the years, is the kind of guy who starts a conversation by asking if he could interest me in helping with this or that undertaking. By the end of the meeting, I am all but begging him to allow me to take part.
Besides that, Rummel took me in for my senior year after Jesuit rightfully booted me. I had a great year at Rummel, and for that I am grateful.
The celebrity waiter concept is interesting. They invite their friends, and cut up with them at the table all night long, asking for "tips" for doing things like actually giving the guests their food. It's all a joke, really, but it is effective. One celebrity waiter set the record by collecting $50,000 in "tips" from his table. I don't know how much I was able to bring in--certainly nowhere near that figure--but it was more than I would have guessed.
There was no band, but they did let me sing a song. The Rummel Fight Song has the same melody as the LSU Fight Song. And that one was copied from composer Cy Coleman, who wrote it for a play called "The Wildcatters." In the Broadway run, the person who sang the song was Lucille Ball. The lyrics start like this:
Hey! Look me over
Lend me an ear
Fresh out of clover
Mortgaged up to here
And that's how I sang the familiar anthem. I'll bet not many people knew that. I get no "tips" for my performance.
The most entertaining part of the evening is in reuniting with a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time. Not many of those were from Rummel, oddly. I was very happy to be introduced to Kenny Francingues, the star-footballer little brother of one of my very best friends during my years at Jesuit. I'd never met Ken before, except perhaps when he was a little kid hanging around the house with his brother Alan, Alan's famous stereo system and me. Alan is no longer with us, having been brought down by an insulin pump.
I didn't get home until after eleven, but at least no thunderstorms attack me en route to the Cool Water Ranch.
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Sunday, May 1, 2016.
It Was A Dark And Rainy Day.
Another fantastically stormy day. The Jazz Festival, which in recent years has put on its show, rain or shine, shut down for at least a day because of the winds, rain, lightning and hail. In my block-long walks to and from St. Jane's and my car this morning, lightning was all around me. What does it mean if you get hit by a thunderbolt en route to Mass?
The dark skies bring such threatening weather that it even chases Mary Ann indoors at The Chimes, one of her favorite places for outdoor dining. It may have been the influence of our friends the Fowlers who--quite sensibly--preferred dining indoors. If it had been just MA and me, I'm sure we would have been exposed to the elements.
I am not a fan of The Chimes, but I recognize a few things they do well. Oysters, raw or grilled, are at the top of that list. The Sunday brunch menu in general is another, although I would not have them on par with Mattina Bella, Abita Roaster, or the Fat Spoon for fancy eggs.
[caption id="attachment_51398" align="alignleft" width="480"]
Favorite Salad @ Chimes.[/caption]
It can't be the food that draws Mary Ann to The Chimes. There's that salad with the grilled chicken in front of her again. The Fowlers eat more or less the same things.
My dinner begins with turtle soup. Again? Well, turtle soup is a relative rarity, and I order it wherever I encounter it. So I eat it two days in a raw. Sue me. This one was meatier and less complex than yesterday's, with a bit more tomato. Good, though.
After that, I have poached (well, one of them was really more like soft-boiled) eggs with fried oysters, grits, hollandaise, and bacon. Bacon? What was that for? Other than the well-known restaurant trick of adding bacon to any dish that needs help? I see through this ruse.
Back at home, I return to the depressing computer situation. John, my computer fixer, says that the power supply and the motherboard on the old unit are shot, and replacing them will cost more than getting a new computer. (And I already have a new one, ready to go.) The good news is that all the files have been rescued. (Computer geeks may now chastise me for not having a complete image of my file system. I do, however, have good copies of almost all my critical documents.)
Also depressing is the state of the dog Susie. She alternates days in which she gets around reasonably well for a dog with a broken leg and when she hardly moves all day. Pain pills seem to have no effect one way or the other. I get many emails from people pulling for Susie. I reassure them that we don't plan to let her loose in the woods to die, even though that's how she originally arrived. She's still the senior pet. (Not counting the fat, lazy blob that is the cat Tumbler, who is fourteen and spends twenty-three hours a day sitting atop the toolshed, waiting for the next meal.)
Favorite Salad @ Chimes.[/caption]
It can't be the food that draws Mary Ann to The Chimes. There's that salad with the grilled chicken in front of her again. The Fowlers eat more or less the same things.
My dinner begins with turtle soup. Again? Well, turtle soup is a relative rarity, and I order it wherever I encounter it. So I eat it two days in a raw. Sue me. This one was meatier and less complex than yesterday's, with a bit more tomato. Good, though.
After that, I have poached (well, one of them was really more like soft-boiled) eggs with fried oysters, grits, hollandaise, and bacon. Bacon? What was that for? Other than the well-known restaurant trick of adding bacon to any dish that needs help? I see through this ruse.
Back at home, I return to the depressing computer situation. John, my computer fixer, says that the power supply and the motherboard on the old unit are shot, and replacing them will cost more than getting a new computer. (And I already have a new one, ready to go.) The good news is that all the files have been rescued. (Computer geeks may now chastise me for not having a complete image of my file system. I do, however, have good copies of almost all my critical documents.)
Also depressing is the state of the dog Susie. She alternates days in which she gets around reasonably well for a dog with a broken leg and when she hardly moves all day. Pain pills seem to have no effect one way or the other. I get many emails from people pulling for Susie. I reassure them that we don't plan to let her loose in the woods to die, even though that's how she originally arrived. She's still the senior pet. (Not counting the fat, lazy blob that is the cat Tumbler, who is fourteen and spends twenty-three hours a day sitting atop the toolshed, waiting for the next meal.)
