[title type="h5"]Tuesday, May 13, 2013.
Wandering Around In 1967.[/title]
It's the forty-seventh anniversary of my Jesuit junior-senior prom, the night I became a man--but not for the classical reasons.
One of the ways I mark the anniversary is by listening to four hours' worth of the music that was on the radio back then. My playlist includes all the Top 40 records of May 13, 1967, plus quite a few songs in the top 100. Woven through the mix are the actual jingles used by the disk jockeys on WNOE and WTIX, the major New Orleans rock stations of the era. If I have the time--and I did today--I recall prom night by driving around town and listening to that music. It makes me feel as if I am sixteen.
After enough of that, it's time for dinner. Wayfare is on my way home, and the Freret Street eatery provides a better dinner than I expect. And I expect good things, based on the first time around.
I begin with a soup of chicken and beet greens, surely the first time I've had that combination. Tasty and brothy, it hits the spot not just for its flavor, but also because I have been singing along with 1967 all night. An herbal, sloshy soup is just what my throat needs.
[caption id="attachment_42363" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Reuben sandwich at Wayfare.[/caption]
Then a sandwich, Wayfare's main specialty. A cheeseburger would be the perfect thing. I ate two cheeseburgers on prom night, in an old drugstore soda fountain long gone. But Wayfare only serves burgers to kids. Good for them! Too many grownups are eating kidfood these days--mac 'n' cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, hot dogs, burgers and fries being the most flagrant examples.
On the other hand, how can I talk when I am spending the night pretending to be barely past puberty?
Back to Wayfare: its reuben sandwich sounds good. I make my usual request: put the cheese right up against the inside face of the bread. This keeps the steam from the sauerkraut and corned beef from turning the bread to mush. The waiter says that the the sandwich comes from a grill press, thereby avoiding the problem. I go along with what knowledgeable waiters tell me, and he was right. All parts of the sandwich are first class, and the bread indeed remains crisp throughout the eating. Although it isn't piled high the way a deli sandwich would be, there is still too much to finish.
While I'm eating at Wayfare, I find myself thinking about making prom night the framework of a novel. A long one. I remember every second of that experience, and every second triggered a flood of reflections. Most concerned trivial matters, but those added up to a fascinating mental world. If I write well (not a given), this could be one of those mysterious tomes in which the protagonist's mind creates a universe from nothing, like the Big Bang. Or Ulysses.
I wrote a sample of the book's voice for this department. After reading and editing it numerous times I decided there was too much chance that readers might find it the ravings of a lunatic. The problem is the one that keeps me from finishing most of my book ideas: I can't imagine who would actually read them. I like to write too much (in both senses of that sentence).
[caption id="attachment_42364" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lemon tartelette at Wayfare[/caption]
The last thing I need after that unfinishable reuben is dessert. But the waiter talks me into the lemon tartelette. It looks minuscule and harmless, but is deep and very sweet. But on prom night, after the two hamburgers and an order of fries and a cherry Coke, my sixteen-year-old appetite could take in a slice of apple pie a la mode. So this fits.
Speaking of insanity: Mary Ann wonders where I was all night. I'm glad she never remembers when it's prom night. (I myself have occasionally forgotten it.) But when she runs up against this greatest of my quirks, she is patient, if not understanding. She was a better catch than the girl who stood me up, anyway.
[title type="h5"]
Wayfare. Uptown: 4510 Freret St. 504-309-0069. [/title]
[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Wednesday, May 14, 2014.
Taking Out-Of-Towners To The Seafood.[/title]
The Boy's family is still in town and hanging with him. Mary Ann volunteered to take his Boston grandmother around to see the local sights. First stop: the matchless beauty of Houmas House Plantation, which impressed her greatly. Then to the Blue Crab, for a view of the lake and some good Louisiana seafood. Turns out that Gram Marian doesn't really like seafood, but it doesn't matter. She enjoys telling stories about The Boy, who she clearly loves dearly.
It was a weird evening for weather, with an overcast of threatening, dark-grey clouds of the kind that throw off massive thunderstorms and tornadoes. Mary Ann was sorry we couldn't dine on the deck. But it was just windy, and as we finished dinner and the sun went down, we could see the orange disk slip into view below the clouds, then behind the horizon, turning the grey to salmon.
[caption id="attachment_42365" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Grilled oysters.[/caption]
The Blue Crab is steady as it approaches its first birthday. We start with gumbo, fried eggplant, and both raw and grilled oysters. The raw could hardly be better, as they have been everywhere I've eaten them lately. As I noted the last time we were here, they need to rework their grilling sauce. Not enough of anything. I also think we have reached the point beyond which any new imitation of Drago's classic invention will be superfluous. Time for chefs to think of other things to top grilled oysters instead of the garlic-and-parmesan butter everyone serves.
[caption id="attachment_42366" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Seafood platter at Blue Crab.[/caption]
The server talks Mary Ann into the thirty-dollar seafood platter. Her rationale: the soft-shell crab, which we want somewhere in this meal, is $20 on its own--but you get one as part of the platter. MA groans when she sees what she has commanded: a pile of fried seafood whose height could be expressed in fractions of feet. Oysters, shrimp, catish, stuffed crab, crab claws, hush puppies, fresh-cut fries and yes--a big soft-shell crab. All hot and crisp, although that fine state could not last long. That's the problem with big seafood platters, unless you split them many ways. Cold fried anything is sub-optimal.
And I have my own fish to try. The catch of the day is red snapper, available amandine if I want, and I do. It is fresh and good, but--perhaps in comparison to the feed trough in front of Mary Ann--kinda skimpy. Not that I could eat it all if I tried, but still, at a price rivaling that of the platter, it is unimpressive.
Still, it is undeniably a happy matter to have this restaurant in West End, where a renaissance is sorely wanted.
[title type="h5"]Blue Crab. West End & Bucktown: 7900 Lakeshore Dr. 504-284-2898. [/title]
