Diary 6|26|2014: DiCristina's, N.O. On Al Jazeera.

[title type="h5"]Thursday, June 19, 2014. The Abbondanza That Is DiCristina's. [/title] The North Shore has an overabundance in two restaurant categories. The greater oversupply is of Mexican restaurants, but lately the number of major Italian places has swelled. A momentary reversal came when Carmelo Chirico announced he was closing his high-end namesake restaurant in Mandeville. But today it came out that Carmelo's space will not be empty for long. Moving there soon is the fourth branch (first on the North Shore) of Taqueria Corona. We may not need another Mexican place in St. Tammany, but it will surely be nice to have Corona and its internal-Mexican tacos added to the mix. (Still no molé, though.) More news: Slade Rushing--who with his wife Allison Vines-Rushing runs MiLa--has been named executive chef for The Restaurant Formerly Known As Brennan's. (For now, this department will call it RFKAB.) The story is that the candidates for the top chef job had to make a virtual order of eggs Benedict. Slade's version involved house-cured Canadian bacon, house-baked English muffins, and yard eggs. From this we learn two things: 1) that the unique, glitzy breakfast for which Brennan's was famous for over sixty years will return and 2) the styrofoam-like Holland rusks on which Brennan's egg dishes always were mounted will be replaced. What we don't know: will Allison stay at MiLa, or will she accept the tempting job of Mommy? She is as fine a chef as her husband, so this is an interesting matter. Slade's hiring for RFKAB triggered another story, this one in the Times-Picayune a few days ago. RFKAB is scheduled to open in September. But Ralph Brennan's corporate executive chef Haley Bitterman says that hiring for this large, ambitious restaurant has been difficult. Jonathan Martin, a reporter who works in the New Orleans bureau of Al Jazeera, wanted to interview me about this, and did. Why would Chef Haley have a hard time finding people, given the high American unemployment rate? But unemployment here has consistently been lower here than in most other parts of the country, I told him. And most jobs at a place like RFKAB require significant experience. Delgado College's excellent culinary school--plus Café Reconcile, Café Hope, and other organizations teaching the basics--add many good people to the upscale restaurant workforce. But we still have more major restaurants per capita than other large American food capital. In one way, I said, it's a good thing our restaurants are moving away from formal service, because few people looking for restaurant jobs know anything about that. The buzz around the radio station (where the Al Jazeera interview took place) was, "Did you hear that Tom Fitzmorris was on Al Jazeera?" The piece is online here. If there is any kind of bias here, I don't see it. Lokks like a good plug for New Orleans. [caption id="attachment_42790" align="alignnone" width="480"] Panneed Sicilian eggplant at DiCristina's.[/caption] To dinner with Mary Ann at DiCristina's. Topic A: the difficulty our daughter Mary Leigh is having getting from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, where The Boy awaits her with open arms. But Mary Ann has planned all this around the use of buddy passes, and holders of those are last priority for seating on an airplane. Last night, ML came close to having to spend the night in LAX, until her brother rescued her after a grueling day of pilming at two in the morning. The ticketing ordeal resumed today, but she finally made it to Pittsburgh, where The Boy is currently in residence while trying to figure out what to do next, his college years having ended. Mary Ann insisted she didn't want to begin eating the inevitable hillock of food they serve at DiCristina's. The restaurant has a family connection with Rocky & Carlo's in St. Bernard Parish, and serves the same kinds of dishes. But she was encouraged when she caught a look at how many dozens of pounds Chef Maria Pyburn (who with her husband and parents own the restaurant) has lost since we were last here. [caption id="attachment_42791" align="alignnone" width="480"] Stewed chicken, brown gravy, peas.[/caption] Maria sent out an appetizer of panneed eggplant with marinara sauce. "They're the small, sweet, light purple Sicilian eggplants," she said. "They taste sweet!" They do. I moved on to a small (anywhere else it would be the large) Italian salad (still known at Rocky's by that other name, which will not fly on the North Shore). And then, with the encouragement of our waitress Barb, we moved away from the Italian eats and on to the New Orleans dinner specials. For MA, a stewed half-chicken with brown gravy, mashed potatoes and peas. For me, lima beans with Italian sausage. Waaaaay too much food, but we knew that coming in. The dessert sounded harmless: a banana cake with whipped cream. A monument of whipped cream, with a rich cake in a martini glass. I couldn't in good conscience eat more than a third of this. Total price for two: $34. DiCristina's. Covington: 810 N Columbia. 985-875-0160.