[title type="h5"]Tuesday, May 6, 2014. Danny And Christopher. Street Food? [/title] The radio round table is set for three, but serves two, and both of those are past guests. Mary Ann, who books the show, is like me (does she like me? I'm not sure) still getting the train started after three weeks of its just sitting there. Danny Millan, the man who made Le Foret what it is, has opened a restaurant of his own for the first time. Cava is in its first weeks but, he says, is performing better than he expected. He has two chefs whose work he likes, and he himself is giving forth the effusive service he did at Le Foret, through the agency of an interesting wait staff evenly split between old professionals and well-groomed young women. Also with us today is Christopher Case, the chef-owner of Christopher's on Carey, a contender for Best Restaurant In Slidell. Despite that, Christopher's and its entire neighborhood--Slidell's historic Olde Towne--has not had the easiest time of attracting a robust crowd. Chris says that things are quite a bit better, to the point that he installed an outdoor dining area. I spent the afternoon chipping away at the giant boulder that is the NOMenu website. Then to dinner in Metairie, where I find nothing that grabs me. Maybe I'm just not hungry. And then I see a place people ask about now and then: Romano's Italian Street Food. Since I just finished ten days of eating Italian street food, this had appeal. I already knew that this place is devised along the currently popular, semi-cafeteria style. You choose the base of your dish--pasta, a pizza variation, a salad or a wrap. They you pick a protein, a sauce, vegetables, cheeses, and few odds and ends. It's entirely up to you. This is, I believe, the problem. The chefs in good restaurants don't stop after they buy the ingredients. They then prepare them in imaginative and, one hopes, tasteful ways. Although there's a lot of appeal in being allowed to build your own plate, most people are not nearly as good at this as a decent chef is. What comes out of the mixing and matching is not especially great. The restaurant gets away with it because, after all, any blame for a mediocre meal falls on the customer. He's the one who scrambled all this stuff tigether. It goes a little farther down the trail, though. I read the menu's promise of roasted herbal chicken, which sounded good. In fact, the chicken is chopped into small dice, and about as ordinary as it's possible to be. The angel hair pasta had been tossed in something like a New Orleans bordelaise, and was better than I expected. But since it came from a pocket in a steam table, it wasn't hot. But the time I dropped it off at the table (of course, I am serving myself as well as directing the cooking) and gathered the plastic utensils, the food was tepid. Romano's makes up for this by being very inexpensive, which surely brings in the twenty-something single people--especially the men, for whom this is a respite from the relentless march of the hamburgers across their palates. Calling this street food--given the hipness that idea has gained in recent years--is insulting. At least to anyone who has had actual street food in Italy. The roadside gas stations in Italy have incomparably better food than this. As I sat there with this meal, I felt I had sinned against my standards of taste. I was ashamed of myself for falling for this. And indeed it was all my fault. [title type="h5"]Romano Italian Street Food. Metairie: 4620 Veterans Memorial Blvd. 504-872-9992. [/title] I spent the afternoon chipping away at the giant boulder that is the NOMenu website. Then to dinner in Metairie, where I find nothing that grabs me. Maybe I'm just not hungry. And then I see a place people ask about now and then: Romano's Italian Street Food. Since I just finished ten days of eating Italian street food, this had appeal. I already knew that this place is devised along the currently popular, semi-cafeteria style. You choose the base of your dish--pasta, a pizza variation, a salad or a wrap. They you pick a protein, a sauce, vegetables, cheeses, and few odds and ends. It's entirely up to you. This is, I believe, the problem. The chefs in good restaurants don't stop after they buy the ingredients. They then prepare them in imaginative and, one hopes, tasteful ways. Read More. . .
