Wednesday, June 15, 2016.
Patois. Toussaint.
[caption id="attachment_51865" align="alignright" width="320"]
Patois dining room.[/caption]Dr. Bob's fiancee is out of town this week, and Mary Ann has something else to do. So Bob and I meet for dinner at Patois, where he is a regular and I have not dined in some time. On a hot and rainy Wednesday summer night, softness in volume turns up in restaurants all over town. Even in places like Patois, to which it's not advisable to go without a reservation.
Bob brings two bottles of wine from his well-stocked cellar, both from the later 1990s. He asks me to make the choice. I am intrigued by a 1999 Languedoc--Domaine de la Grange des Perrers. That year was around the time when wines from the southeastern-France Languedoc region stopped being strictly country-style. Wine making methods pioneered in California turned what had been mediocre into delightful. This was a good example, with bold flavors all around, plenty of fruit and fresh acidity.
[caption id="attachment_51863" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Gnocchi made very well.[/caption]
Every time I dine at Patois, I leave with the conviction that the way to go is to build a dinner out of appetizers. Part of the explanation is that there are twice as many starters as there are entrees. The appetizer list includes not just the expected seafoods, soups, and salads, but also some distinctly heavier, meatier selections.
We begin with some grilled octopus, whose watery origins are gainsaid by a char at the edges of both the cephalopod and the slices of eggplant and smoked tomatoes that came with. The same flavor profile is just right with the big red wine. We each have a pasta, one as fine as the other. Dr. B grabbed the leek-ash-coated noodles with chanterelle mushrooms and finely-grated parmigiano cheese. Mine is potato gnocchi, defeating a curse on that item that usually (and everywhere) makes it come out heavy and gooey. These morsels are light and work well with more chanterelle mushrooms (I know they're in season, because I've seen some along the trail at the Cool Water Ranch lately).
[caption id="attachment_51860" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mussels and pommes frites @ Patois.[/caption]
The next course brings Bob a chicken andouille gumbo, and me a big bowl of mussels in an excellent, translucent broth. But you never know what you're going to get when you buy mussels. These are vividly fresh, plump to the point that you could see the gender of the bivalves. (The cream-colored ones are females, and the orange-yellow ones are males.) But they are very small. The kitchen made up for that by giving me a lot of them.
I feel compelled to bring the following to light whenever I get mussels in a French-rooted restaurant. The classic way of serving them in France and Belgium (the mussel capital of the world) is to dump a large pile of fresh-cut pommes frites on top of the mussels. But the steam from the mussels takes all the crispness out of the fries. I always forget to ask for the fries on the side.
It is around this time that I bring up what I knew would be a painful matter for Bob. He was a longtime personal friend of Allen Toussaint, the brilliant, seminal New Orleans musician who died in the middle of a performance in Europe a couple of months ago. I watch regret cloud Bob's face, followed by his educated thoughts about what caused Toussaint's demise, and whether it could have been avoided. His pain is clear.
[caption id="attachment_51864" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Duck confit salad.[/caption]
Dinner continues. Bob's main is a duck-confit salad, which he says is very good. I have a half-dozen lamb ribs--something we don't encounter very often. These are grilled to a char, enough to make the eating easier that it looked like it was going to be.
Bob gets a peach tart for dessert. I have a pretty fruit tart topped with three kinds of black berries. Somebody put some effort into that. You know you're in a good place when they take that kind of care with a small matter.
I ask Bob whether he and his girlfriend, recently engaged, will hold the ceremonies anytime soon. He says there is no date, mainly because neither of the two houses involved is big enough to hold all of the stuff they each hold. I know this problem intimately.
Patois. Uptown: 6078 Laurel. 504-895-9441.
Patois dining room.[/caption]Dr. Bob's fiancee is out of town this week, and Mary Ann has something else to do. So Bob and I meet for dinner at Patois, where he is a regular and I have not dined in some time. On a hot and rainy Wednesday summer night, softness in volume turns up in restaurants all over town. Even in places like Patois, to which it's not advisable to go without a reservation.
Bob brings two bottles of wine from his well-stocked cellar, both from the later 1990s. He asks me to make the choice. I am intrigued by a 1999 Languedoc--Domaine de la Grange des Perrers. That year was around the time when wines from the southeastern-France Languedoc region stopped being strictly country-style. Wine making methods pioneered in California turned what had been mediocre into delightful. This was a good example, with bold flavors all around, plenty of fruit and fresh acidity.
[caption id="attachment_51863" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Gnocchi made very well.[/caption]
Every time I dine at Patois, I leave with the conviction that the way to go is to build a dinner out of appetizers. Part of the explanation is that there are twice as many starters as there are entrees. The appetizer list includes not just the expected seafoods, soups, and salads, but also some distinctly heavier, meatier selections.
We begin with some grilled octopus, whose watery origins are gainsaid by a char at the edges of both the cephalopod and the slices of eggplant and smoked tomatoes that came with. The same flavor profile is just right with the big red wine. We each have a pasta, one as fine as the other. Dr. B grabbed the leek-ash-coated noodles with chanterelle mushrooms and finely-grated parmigiano cheese. Mine is potato gnocchi, defeating a curse on that item that usually (and everywhere) makes it come out heavy and gooey. These morsels are light and work well with more chanterelle mushrooms (I know they're in season, because I've seen some along the trail at the Cool Water Ranch lately).
[caption id="attachment_51860" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mussels and pommes frites @ Patois.[/caption]
The next course brings Bob a chicken andouille gumbo, and me a big bowl of mussels in an excellent, translucent broth. But you never know what you're going to get when you buy mussels. These are vividly fresh, plump to the point that you could see the gender of the bivalves. (The cream-colored ones are females, and the orange-yellow ones are males.) But they are very small. The kitchen made up for that by giving me a lot of them.
I feel compelled to bring the following to light whenever I get mussels in a French-rooted restaurant. The classic way of serving them in France and Belgium (the mussel capital of the world) is to dump a large pile of fresh-cut pommes frites on top of the mussels. But the steam from the mussels takes all the crispness out of the fries. I always forget to ask for the fries on the side.
It is around this time that I bring up what I knew would be a painful matter for Bob. He was a longtime personal friend of Allen Toussaint, the brilliant, seminal New Orleans musician who died in the middle of a performance in Europe a couple of months ago. I watch regret cloud Bob's face, followed by his educated thoughts about what caused Toussaint's demise, and whether it could have been avoided. His pain is clear.
[caption id="attachment_51864" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Duck confit salad.[/caption]
Dinner continues. Bob's main is a duck-confit salad, which he says is very good. I have a half-dozen lamb ribs--something we don't encounter very often. These are grilled to a char, enough to make the eating easier that it looked like it was going to be.
Bob gets a peach tart for dessert. I have a pretty fruit tart topped with three kinds of black berries. Somebody put some effort into that. You know you're in a good place when they take that kind of care with a small matter.
I ask Bob whether he and his girlfriend, recently engaged, will hold the ceremonies anytime soon. He says there is no date, mainly because neither of the two houses involved is big enough to hold all of the stuff they each hold. I know this problem intimately.
