Tuesday, May 3, 2016.
Where's The Jumbo Lump?
The rain is finally ending, although clouds still cover the sky. I head into town. I have a studio full of people to interview, all of them involved in "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying," which begins its run at the Rivertown Theater in Kenner this Friday.
This brings to three the number of times I have been part of the cast of a play. The high point of this scant career was as the male lead in "Falling Scarlet," a play produced by the Dashiki Theater in 1974. Some good my degree in Drama has done for me.
I travel up Magazine Street, looking for restaurants I need to try. Next time I attempt this, I will actually make a list of names and addresses, so I can go straight there instead of looking around cluelessly.
After driving the entire length of Magazine with no luck, I decide to eat at Dante's Kitchen. Whoops! I forgot. They're closed on Tuesdays. I drive up River Road into Metairie, where I wind up at Bistro Orleans.
The special tonight is soft-shell crabs. The one I get is a "whale," as the crabbing industry calls them. I thought I had two of them, so much space did it take up on the plate. It's on top of pasta with a pale red sauce that made only a background statement.
A couple of weeks ago a reader wrote to tell me that I was mistaken in my identifying where the jumbo lump crabmeat is located in our blue crabs. I have been saying that it's at the base of the big claw. Wrong, as I clearly saw when I peeled away the top shell of my whale. The jumbo lump is where the flat, round backfin legs meet the body. What with all the crabs I've eaten and picked in my life, I wonder how that got past me. Live and learn.
Bistro Orleans. Metairie: 3216 West Esplanade Ave. 504-304-1469.
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[caption id="attachment_51423" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Cafe Adelaide's dining room.[/caption]
Wednesday, May 4, 2016.
Walking. Café Adelaide.
Overnight, during another entertaining sleep for me, the dog Barry barks to go outside. I open the door and out he goes. But then I see the dog Susie shuffling along the door at a brisker pace than I've seen her take since she broke her leg a couple of weeks ago. Then she stepped down onto the deck. She couldn't do that last time she tried. By morning, she is down on the lawn, as if it were no big deal. She appears to be healing, if slowly. The vet told us that healing was not in the cards. I guess Susie didn't get that word.
A busy, productive morning, I update the 100 Best Mother's Day Restaurant list, then write a column about Kenton's for CityBusiness, and all the usual departments for the NOMenu Daily. When I am troubled, I work harder, get more done, and discover that I'm not a complete mess after all.
[caption id="attachment_51420" align="alignright" width="320"]
Chef Meg at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]Dinner at Café Adelaide. Their p.r. lady has been inviting me to come by to see what Chef Meg has done with the menu. She is the first female chef ever at Café Adelaide, they're proud to point out. But since the two Brennan cousins who own the place are both women, one wonders why that took so long.
I sign on to the $35 three-course dinner. It begins with a variation on a Caesar salad, and is good enough. I was really hoping for a soup, but I didn't like the sound of the du jour, made with ham and sweet potatoes.
The entree is terrific. It's black drum, the fish that has become the standard species for the Creole-French restaurants of the city. It's not the best in our waters--it's topped by red snapper, pompano, and speckled trout, all of which are sporadic. But it is very good and usually available. Chef Meg's recipe for the handsome, generous fillet is a cooked-down brown sauce containing red beans and ham gravy. I recognize this as a good bet. Beans and seafood always work, sometime to extraordinarily excellence. And brown sauces on fish are as uniquely Creole as can be imagined.
[caption id="attachment_51421" align="alignleft" width="480"]
Black drumfish with red beans and ham at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]
Dessert was a blueberry cobbler baked in a minaiture cast iron skillet. The idea sounded wonderful, but it was dry, and the blueberries lost both flavor and texture. On top of that, it was a bit too large, especially after I ate the whole thing.
I notice a trend in restaurants like Café Adelaide. The menu is quite limited. I counted eight appetizers (including salads and soups) and a mere seven entrees. The restaurant is not very busy tonight, but that's a function of how full the Loew's hotel is. Still, I find myself looking for more range on the menu, turning it around to see if I had missed something. It's true that we don't need the 138 dishes that used to be offered by Antoine's and its kin, but this sparse menu takes some promise out of the ordering.
At the banquette adjoining mine, a half-dozen well-dressed, thirty-something men and women are having a business supper. I wasn't tuned in, but it sounded political, with everyone at the table offering opinions as to what will happen after this election, as if the result were foregone. A lot of that kind of talk lately. I'm glad that I don't talk politics.
Cafe Adelaide. CBD: 300 Poydras St. 504-595-3305.
Cafe Adelaide's dining room.[/caption]
Chef Meg at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]Dinner at Café Adelaide. Their p.r. lady has been inviting me to come by to see what Chef Meg has done with the menu. She is the first female chef ever at Café Adelaide, they're proud to point out. But since the two Brennan cousins who own the place are both women, one wonders why that took so long.
I sign on to the $35 three-course dinner. It begins with a variation on a Caesar salad, and is good enough. I was really hoping for a soup, but I didn't like the sound of the du jour, made with ham and sweet potatoes.
The entree is terrific. It's black drum, the fish that has become the standard species for the Creole-French restaurants of the city. It's not the best in our waters--it's topped by red snapper, pompano, and speckled trout, all of which are sporadic. But it is very good and usually available. Chef Meg's recipe for the handsome, generous fillet is a cooked-down brown sauce containing red beans and ham gravy. I recognize this as a good bet. Beans and seafood always work, sometime to extraordinarily excellence. And brown sauces on fish are as uniquely Creole as can be imagined.
[caption id="attachment_51421" align="alignleft" width="480"]
Black drumfish with red beans and ham at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]
Dessert was a blueberry cobbler baked in a minaiture cast iron skillet. The idea sounded wonderful, but it was dry, and the blueberries lost both flavor and texture. On top of that, it was a bit too large, especially after I ate the whole thing.
I notice a trend in restaurants like Café Adelaide. The menu is quite limited. I counted eight appetizers (including salads and soups) and a mere seven entrees. The restaurant is not very busy tonight, but that's a function of how full the Loew's hotel is. Still, I find myself looking for more range on the menu, turning it around to see if I had missed something. It's true that we don't need the 138 dishes that used to be offered by Antoine's and its kin, but this sparse menu takes some promise out of the ordering.
At the banquette adjoining mine, a half-dozen well-dressed, thirty-something men and women are having a business supper. I wasn't tuned in, but it sounded political, with everyone at the table offering opinions as to what will happen after this election, as if the result were foregone. A lot of that kind of talk lately. I'm glad that I don't talk politics.
