Our daughter Mary Leigh is twenty-five today, and that's the last time I will ever divulge that datum. Her birthday is almost too busy to celebrate. It looked as if her employer would send her to Fort Worth to troubleshoot and polish a project the company has in progress. Another manager needed her to be in town, however, and she wound up staying home. As if that weren't enough to deal with, she also has been commissioned to bake a birthday cake for a kid who is into astronomy. She sculpted cakes that really did look like Mars, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune, but not Saturn--the rings were a challenge even to ML's great skills. If she had more time, she'd do even the ringed planet. Her renditions of the Earth was especially magnificent. It tasted good, too. I ate more than my share of Jupiter.
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Dining room at Shaya.[/caption]
The birthday dinner is at Shaya, the much-acclaimed Israeli restaurant owned by John Besh and his business partner Alon Shaya. The Marys are both regular customers at Shaya, havng worked their way through the entire menu before I had a chance to dine there even ones. The eating was filling, and in a marvelous way. We began with two variations of hummus. There are four or five, with the chickpea dip around the inner wall of the bowl and an assortment of many other flavors in the center. All this is identifiably Middle Eastern, but largely unlike any other I've had. And made especially enjoyable by the house-made pita bread, which is hard to stop glomming down.
After an Israeli salad, a knish of beef and half of a roasted chicken with a sharply-flavored collection of sauces and garnishes. It gets better all the time, is what I want to say here.
Judging by the looks on faces, this conclusion has been arrived at by the the full house of customers. The three of us are all out on the concrete courtyard, if course. Mary Ann insists on outdoor dining, especially for an event like this.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017.
To Tell Or Not To Tell.
How do I get any work done on a day cluttered with anxiety? Especially when much of the anxiety is generated by my not getting everything done? If we could unload just the self-fueling crises, life would be much sweeter.
Today I am worried about something I have to do tomorrow. MA tells me I should not use this as fodder for this department, because it would surely drive readers away. She has a better sense of such things than I do, so I will hold back.
Something more pleasant transpired. I have sold so many articles lately--to say nothing of the new edition of my cookbook--that our bottom line is looking better than it has since before ML's wedding. That event was postponed at the eleventh hour, but nevertheless did take our American Express balance to record highs. Whew.
Thursday, May 11, 2017.
Unique Day, Not Much Of It Pleasant, Except For Dinner.
Let's say that my schedule today was filled to the brim with things that make one dizzy, amazed, thankful, and full of wonder for the future, not all of it good.
Mary Ann hosted the radio show while I was preoccupied. She had among her guests a lady who was the first email server at Galatoire's. Seems to me that happened rather a long time ago. it also brings to mind something I read in the great new book, The Ten Restaurants That Changed America. One of the points made by the author is that in the first hundred or so years, the restaurant business, far from hiring women to wait tables, didn't admit women as customers, sometimes even when the women were accompanied by men. We all know that happened, but we don't think of it much.
The book is rather large, but it does hold my attention. Especially when I encounter my name in it, from my involvement with a post-Katrina Antoine's.
Mary Ann and I have dinner at Rip's, a lakefront restaurant in Mandeville. After ignoring the place for most of the twenty-seven years we've lived on the North Shore, we have been there a few times lately. Mary Ann in particular loves the upstairs open deck overlooking the lake. I have turtle soup and crawfish Monica, a dish I've not eaten in a long time. It's a penne pasta dish with a cream sauce and crawfish tails. It's good, and served in a pile large enough for at least four people. That's the North Shore, though.
Rip's Seafood Restaurant. Mandeville: 1917 Lakeshore Dr. 985-727-2829.
