[title type="h5"]
Wednesday, June 10, 2015.
Nightmares Of Going Back To Work.[/title]
[dropcap1]I[/dropcap1] managed to sleep until about seven this morning, despite a very disturbing, convincing and long performance by the Dreams Division of my brain. All my worlds seem to have crashed into one big mess. It was one of those nightmares that doesn't go right away when you wake up.
After I settle down, I get to work on the backed-up jobs that accumulated in my absence. I get the expected calls from several of the radio station's sales people, whose efforts have been put on hold until my return. It feels good in a way that my activities affect so many other people. But in another way, it emphatically lets me know that regardless of how much I need a vacation, the rest of my world requires my presence.
It would have been more effective for me to stay at home with the radio show, but I thought I'd better show up in person. I goof up right off the bat. I rush to finish and publish today's NOMenu Daily. But when I get to the South Shore, I see that it's not a half-hour from showtime, but ninety minutes. I've run late before, but I can't recall ever having been early by accident.
Since I have the time, I use it for lunch--a mealtime I employ rarely. I walk across Tchoupitoulas to Café Adelaide. The staff, with only a middling number of lunch customers, takes its time discussing the specials with me. The soup of the day is crawfish curry. It sounds good and is, despite a bit too much thickness in the broth and a heavy touch of tomato.
[caption id="attachment_47928" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Masa oysters and grits at Cafe Adelaide.[/caption]
Now I have fried oysters presented in an unique concoction. The oysters are coated with masa meal--the kind of corn meal used in Mexican cooling. These are dropped atop a pool of thick grits with cochon de lait, fennel salsa and hot sauce. If I hadn't known about the odd ingredients, I don't think I would have guessed them. But I wouldn't have liked the dish any less.
[caption id="attachment_47929" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Strawberry shortcake.[/caption]
The server talks me into a variation on strawberry shortcake, with excellent berries--probably among the last of the season, and very ripe.
Ti Martin--who with her cousin Lally Brennan operates Café Adelaide and SoBou, not to mention Commander's Palace--drops in and sits with me for awhile, catching up on the restaurant scene as it enters the slow time of year. I tell her that Café Adelaide is, in my opinion, an underrated restaurant. Even this short lunch lives up to that.
Then I had to get going. In our big radio complex, almost everyone whose path I cross welcomes me back from vacation. How do they know I was gone? Other than that, there is not really much going on. I have a few commercials to record. The radio show itself starts strong but finishes weak. Ah, something else that makes me hesitant to take vacations: my audience leaves when I do, and it's tough to get them back.
The star among my fill-in hosts is unquestionably Daniel Lelchuk, "The Gourmet Cellist." Diane Newman, my boss, is thrilled by him. "He's a natural for radio!" she says. Daniel--who we got to know through his calls into the show during the last year or two--is indeed well-spoken and suave. The Gourmet Cellist moniker is accurate: he knows about food and wine and is widely traveled. And he is second cellist in the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Pretty impressive for a guy in his twenties. And who would expect that he would do a crackerjack job on ad-lib live commercials? Mary Ann says he's better than I am. Something else to keep me awake nights.
[title type="h5"]Cafe Adelaide. CBD: 300 Poydras St. 504-595-3305. [/title]
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[title type="h5"]Thursday, June 11, 2015.
Must. . .Have. . . Roast Beef Poor Boy.
[/title]
[dropcap1]W[/dropcap1]hen we return from distant lands, our family has a tradition of stopping at a restaurant well saturated with New Orleans flavor. Usually this is the Acme Oyster House, which we can catch on our way home from the airport. But that's not how the schedule worked this time. So, after the radio show today, I drove to the first place that came to mind for a roast beef poor boy. In this case that would be Sammy's on Veterans, across the highway from the Lamplighter Lounge's oversize neon sign. (I wonder what goes on in that old place. I'll have to stop in and have a drink someday.)
Sammy's is always nealy full when I go, and everybody there seems to be a regular. I pull into a small table in the small dining room. The sandwich is big, filling, and possessed of that distinctive flavor that turned me on to poor boys and food in general a long time ago.
I make a second eating stop, this one at New Orleans Coffee and Beignet Company, a mile or two on my way. It's managed by the same people who own the New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company and the newer Legacy Kitchen. The latter, which seems planned for making multi-unit versions of itself, confirmed that a few weeks ago when it opened its second location, in the Renaissance Arts Hotel in the Warehouse District.
[caption id="attachment_47927" align="alignnone" width="480"]
An order of beignets and a large cafe au lait at NOCoffee & Beignets.[/caption]
New Orleans Coffee and Beignet offers its namesake dishes, as well as a full line of coffees and other beverages, and an assortment of muffins, desserts, and bakeries. It is somewhat spartan in its surroundings--the building used to be a Burger King--but it still easily beats the atmosphere of the Morning Call. That's the dominant coffee-and-doughnut shop in the busy neighborhood of Veterans at Causeway Boulevard. I wonder if some recent renovations at the Morning Call were triggered by the advent of the N.O. Coffee & Beignet.
I hesitate to say it, but I must: the NOCBC blows the Morning Call's (and, while were at it it, the Café Du Monde's) beignets off the table. They are large, so hot out of the fryer that you must hold back before taking a bite, and very large. So large that I could have gotten by with just one. But I couldn't stop, and wound up taking all three doughnuts down.
The chicory café au lait doesn't have the punch of the Morning Call's. Nor that of what I make for myself at home. But it's not bad, and any coffee and chicory I find is cause for celebration.
Okay. Even though this is all very Creole, I have gone overboard in convincing my palate that it's back home. All that Italian and Spanish food has my stomach hungry for more food than it got from the regimen that helped me lose all that weight last year. I will slow down. Tomorrow.
[title type="h5"]
Sammy's Po-Boys. Metairie: 901 Veterans Blvd. 504-835-0916.
New Orleans Cafe & Beignet Co. Metairie: 3005 Veterans Blvd. 504-644-4130. [/title]
