Friday, April 8, 2016.
Cava Is Two. Giant Soft-Shell Crabs.
I have a vague recollection that some guests are scheduled for the radio show today. I also recall that they invited me to have dinner with them at Restaurant August. So, although I would rather stay home today, I go in. But no guests. No dinner at August.
I salvage a good dinner, though. I stop in at Cava. Danny Millan greets me with open arms (literally) and tells me that he is celebrating the two-year anniversary of his restaurant this weekend. Here's how: he's closing down on Saturday and taking all his employees out to dinner somewhere.
What we have here is a man who climbed the ladder of his long career in the restaurant business working exclusively in the front of the house. In doing so, he goes against the current trend of all-powerful chefs. The man in the suit who greets you is not often the boss these days.
I think that change has been a mistake. There is no question that most people are more impressed by the service a restaurant gives than in the cooking in the kitchen. The waiters (the good ones, anyway) know more about the customers than the chefs do. The funny thing is that the really great food comes out of the system with the servers in charge. (See Clancy's, Galatoire's or Vincent's.)
Danny has been doing more cooking lately than I remember from his years at Brennan's, Restaurant August, Le Foret, and the Sazerac. He's all over the place at Cava. Especially now that the place is a big success. In the early months, I picked up a vibe of uncertainty about whether he thought that this, his first restaurant as owner, would make it. I never had any doubt about that, but Danny seemed to take more convincing. His customers soon told him so with their patronage.
Danny seems to be the soup chef at Cava. Last time I was here I had an alluring tomato and meatball soup. Tonight, he concocted a lentil soup with nuggets of sausage. Even with the Lentil Soup Advantage (I have never in my life encountered a bad lentil soup), this was luscious.
[caption id="attachment_51232" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Soft-shell crab at Cava.[/caption]
One of Danny's prime areas of expertise is in knowing where to get good groceries. He has a particularly reliable source for fresh local crabmeat. Tonight, he also has some enormous soft shell crabs, right out of the bayous around Lafitte. He brings a tray of them over for my approval. I hadn't figured on that, but couldn't resist it now. It came out on a bed of corn macquechoux, easy on the tomato. Delicious. And a lot of food.
[caption id="attachment_51231" align="alignnone" width="480"]
New bread pudding at Cava.[/caption]
What for dessert? Danny says the bread pudding is new. I love bread pudding, but the trend now is to make the bricks bigger and bigger. I am pleasantly surprised that the pudding part is about the size of a small cupcake in the upper left of a plate that also includes spherical pastries filled with a fluffy custard and some big strawberries. Tying all this together is a network of chocolate sauce drizzled into a rectangle. Beautiful!
Cava. Lakeview: 789 Harrison Ave. 504-304-9034.
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Saturday, April 9, 2016.
French Quarter Fest, Day Three. Habaneros. Walter.
My weekend is full of urgent tasks. I actually made a job list--something I do only when there's trouble on the horizon, or when I can't figure out what to do next. I am just settling into the first item when I find out that a rescheduled LSU basketball game has moved today's radio broadcast from the French Quarter Festival up to noon from its original two. That makes me stop everything and hit the road. I give myself a stress test by walking briskly the dozen blocks from the radio station's parking garage to Jackson Square. It takes me only thirteen minutes and gets my pulse pounding, if not out of breath. The streets are full of people, and I have to do a lot of dodging.
I'm there for an hour and a half, and the samples from the vendors are plentiful. Two big plates of boiled crawfish from Rouse's begin the parade. Tujague's has a new chicken-andouille jambalaya and the usual stuffed mirliton. Both excellent. Here's another crawfish crepe with goat cheese from Muriel's. And the trio of Chinese-Cajun dishes from Trey Yuen. I try to glom onto a Vaucresson's Creole hot sausage, but I can't make it to the booth and back in a commercial break. How I miss Mary Ann, who would have brought two dozen samples to the broadcast tent, and eaten half of them on the way back. She loves events like this. I eat a modest amount of food, and depart when the show ends at one-thirty.
I have it in mind to try a new approach to the flat tire on Murray, my sometimes stalwart lawn tractor. I charged the battery overnight, and have my fingers crossed that the tire fills up when I administer about half a can of flat-fix into it. It works! At least for now. I have a cordless tire pump charged and ready if it should deflate in the field.
It takes a few tries, but Murray starts up. I head for the front yard, which is filled with usual early-spring weeds, the kind that makes the house appear to be uninhabited, and probably irks the neighbors. I don't do a thorough job--the ground is still very wet, and almost bogs me down a few times.
What with the run into town and the hour of lawn trimming, I am primed to take a long nap. I awaken hungry. I go to Habaneros, a year-old Mexican restaurant in Covington. MA and I have been a few times and very much like it, but it's been some time, and I'm the mood.
[caption id="attachment_51230" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Esquites @ Habaneros.[/caption]
The dinner begins with something totally new. Esquites are a pile of spicy fresh corn kernels held together with a queso sauce. Funny that I would have these two days in a row, counting the macquechoux yesterday at Cava.
[caption id="attachment_51229" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tomatillo and cheese enchiladas with chicken.[/caption]
That was an entree. The main is three enchiladas with queso fresco. All of this--including the salsa, which is extraordinarily peppery, and sharpened even more with a substantial lime juice ingredient--is very good, with one striking exception. The chicken is tasty enough, but it was so overcooked that I could not get even one piece of it well enough chewed to attempt swallowing. I would have sent it back, but I already have too much food here. A situation I enhance by having a well-made flan for dessert.
On my way home, my phone rings. The dashboard of the Beetle picks up the call and puts it on the speaker, and shows the caller's telephone number. (This will seem normal to many readers, but it's all new to me.) I don't really need to answer. I know what a call from my little sister Lynn will be about at this hour. Walter Howat, my big sister Judy's husband for fifty-two years, has passed away. Brain cancer. Eighty years old. No pain, nothing horrible, slipped away quickly.
Walter spent most of his life making things more fun for everybody around him. This is one of the primary jobs of a father, which he was to three boys and a girl. Like most dads, his sense of humor ran to the silly when they were little, then to the have-you-heard-this-one when his audience was in its teens and twenties, then to almost unbearably corny later. That made his kids roll their eyes and groan in complaint, even as they knew that this was one of the many things that engendered love for their father. Any dad that can do this for as long as Walter did is a lucky man. Lucky also are all the people who knew him.
In my case, Walter's greatest influence on me was his humor--especially the corny part. Between him and my equally cornball father, I learned the craft well. One other thing he did for me was suggest that I go to Manresa Retreat House, as he had been doing for some time. I can't imagine living without that.
I was eight years old when Walter and Judy were married. So Walter was not like a brother-in-law, but more like an uncle or, really, a parent. (Judy always was like a second mother to me and my two younger sisters.) His loss will cause a shift in the ground under our feet.
Habaneros. Covington: 69305 LA Hwy 21. 985-871-8760.
Soft-shell crab at Cava.[/caption]
One of Danny's prime areas of expertise is in knowing where to get good groceries. He has a particularly reliable source for fresh local crabmeat. Tonight, he also has some enormous soft shell crabs, right out of the bayous around Lafitte. He brings a tray of them over for my approval. I hadn't figured on that, but couldn't resist it now. It came out on a bed of corn macquechoux, easy on the tomato. Delicious. And a lot of food.
[caption id="attachment_51231" align="alignnone" width="480"]
New bread pudding at Cava.[/caption]
What for dessert? Danny says the bread pudding is new. I love bread pudding, but the trend now is to make the bricks bigger and bigger. I am pleasantly surprised that the pudding part is about the size of a small cupcake in the upper left of a plate that also includes spherical pastries filled with a fluffy custard and some big strawberries. Tying all this together is a network of chocolate sauce drizzled into a rectangle. Beautiful!
Esquites @ Habaneros.[/caption]
The dinner begins with something totally new. Esquites are a pile of spicy fresh corn kernels held together with a queso sauce. Funny that I would have these two days in a row, counting the macquechoux yesterday at Cava.
[caption id="attachment_51229" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tomatillo and cheese enchiladas with chicken.[/caption]
That was an entree. The main is three enchiladas with queso fresco. All of this--including the salsa, which is extraordinarily peppery, and sharpened even more with a substantial lime juice ingredient--is very good, with one striking exception. The chicken is tasty enough, but it was so overcooked that I could not get even one piece of it well enough chewed to attempt swallowing. I would have sent it back, but I already have too much food here. A situation I enhance by having a well-made flan for dessert.
On my way home, my phone rings. The dashboard of the Beetle picks up the call and puts it on the speaker, and shows the caller's telephone number. (This will seem normal to many readers, but it's all new to me.) I don't really need to answer. I know what a call from my little sister Lynn will be about at this hour. Walter Howat, my big sister Judy's husband for fifty-two years, has passed away. Brain cancer. Eighty years old. No pain, nothing horrible, slipped away quickly.
Walter spent most of his life making things more fun for everybody around him. This is one of the primary jobs of a father, which he was to three boys and a girl. Like most dads, his sense of humor ran to the silly when they were little, then to the have-you-heard-this-one when his audience was in its teens and twenties, then to almost unbearably corny later. That made his kids roll their eyes and groan in complaint, even as they knew that this was one of the many things that engendered love for their father. Any dad that can do this for as long as Walter did is a lucky man. Lucky also are all the people who knew him.
In my case, Walter's greatest influence on me was his humor--especially the corny part. Between him and my equally cornball father, I learned the craft well. One other thing he did for me was suggest that I go to Manresa Retreat House, as he had been doing for some time. I can't imagine living without that.
I was eight years old when Walter and Judy were married. So Walter was not like a brother-in-law, but more like an uncle or, really, a parent. (Judy always was like a second mother to me and my two younger sisters.) His loss will cause a shift in the ground under our feet.
