Monday, June 12, 2017.
Serious Red Beans And Rice.
MA is busy getting the radio show pulled together for the days she will be hosting it, as well as to line up guests for the fill-in hosts. I'm sure glad she takes care of these matters.
I go to Abita Roaster for lunch. They get my current first-place award for red beans and rice these days. The beans are of perfect texture and seasoning. The hot sausage comes in an extra-wide pattie, just peppery enough, carrying the rich amount of rendered red fat. The deal also comes with a corn pancake. Like a regular pancake, but with the texture of cornbread as opposed to biscuits.
I stay home for the radio show, because that's what I do on Mondays, with or without a chorus rehearsal.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017.
Caribbean Room News. Down The Bayou.
I don't know whether this is an encouraging sign, but during the past twenty-four hours, three people told me that they went to the Caribbean Room in the refurbished Pontchartrain Hotel, and found it excellent. That is not what I had been hearing and experiencing myself a few months ago. Maybe it's time for me to revisit the revived classic.
Perhaps even more encouraging is that all three of the people who say they liked the food at the C-Room mentioned the fact that jackets are required for gentlemen diners there. They seemed to find that enjoyable. Now we're getting somewhere!
I think about going there tonight myself. But it's Tuesday, and I don't think they have live music that night. I think about other possibilities for dinner. The Upperline? Closed on Tuesdays. A few other places with comparable problems. Then calls Mary Ann, who thinks that DTB--a new restaurant on the Oak Street strip in the Riverbend--is a place we ought to visit. If I were without the Marys to push me along, I would have rejected the place as too new. But they love brand-new eateries, and suddenly there we are, after I hold down the table for a half-hour while ML changes clothes.
One other aspect of DTB ("down the bayou") that softens my thoughts is its proximity to a neighborhood where I lived and worked for three or four years in my young twenties. It's a block and a half from Time Saver #1, where I worked for nine years during high school and college, before leaving for the newspaper business, for which I began writing restaurant reviews in 1972. Most memorable Time Saver #1 moment: being held up by a man with a gun. He beat up my co-worker pretty badly. I stepped up just as the robber and his accomplice made for the exit. He didn't touch me. I got a good look at the gun. I think it was a toy.
The arrival of the Marys knocks that reverie out of my mind. I greet them with a batch of hand-cut fries, our standard appetizer when the three of us are dining out. The menu and the kitchen are ready for orders like that, and we keep on ordering. Fried cornbread (like hush puppies). Roasted asparagus with green beans, all cut into unidentifiable pieces, but remain good anyway. A new approach to Drago's-style char-broiled oysters has the same ingredients baked in a gratin dish. A duck confit that MA orders. She has a new hunger for duck these days. Fried catfish in classic style, very generous and just right.
I'm glad to have found out about this place, which seems to have its act very much together. MA loves the environment, which is decked with industrial-strength flooring, window coverings, and ceilings. It's not loud, even though it was full during most of our time there.
Halfway through, the man who served my sister Lynn and I a couple of weeks ago at Cavan walks up to the table. I recognize him immediately: he has an accent from his homeland Lithuania. I also remember his name easily: Tomas. He says that he liked what I said about him in a Dining Diary piece last week. He doesn't work here at DTB, but is just having dinner. As he leaves, I tell him good-bye in Russian. I took that language for two years at UNO, and don't remember much of it. Luckily, Vladimir Putin doesn't come up in the conversation.
I later learn that DTB (whose sub-name is Social House,) was assembled by a group of chefs, cocktail experts, sommeliers and dessert specialists. Most of them learned their strokes at Commander's Palace or other restaurants allied with it. That's not a bad point from which to branch out.
DTB Social House. Riverbend: 8201 Oak St. 504-518-6889.
