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Thursday, July 2, 2015.
Copper River Salmon @ Tomas Bistro.[/title]
A number of the best restaurants in New Orleans are within two blocks of the radio station. It's almost as if the station moved there for that reason, or the restaurants appeared because the station was there. (It is absolutely not the latter.)
Despite this happy circumstance, I don't dine often in the neighborhood. But I am always thinking of the nearby places. Particularly of Tomas Bistro. It's Tommy Andrade's effort to keep fine dining alive. (So is his Tommy's Cuisine across the street, but in a different way.)
Tomas Bistro has been unvisited by me since before Thanksgiving, when we went by to take a look at the private dining facilities. They were on the short list as a possible venue for Jude's wedding last December. My son was high on the place, because it has a strong New Orleans feeling and great food. His wife leaned more toward La Foret and Restaurant August. (The latter ultimately got the job, because neither of the lovebirds had any reluctance about it.)
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Tommy Andrade.[/caption]
Tommy is a longtime friend, and a man with a complete understanding of restaurant experiences in the classic style. He ran the old Sazerac for over a decade, when that restaurant demonstrated the highest peaks of magnificence in local dining.
The reason I say all this is to set the stage for what happened when I arrived. There is a new manager on the floor at Tomas Bistro. Neither he nor the two or three waiters in my end of the dining room know me. I prefer that greatly to being made a fuss over, especially when I'm dining solo.
The manager starts in on recommendations from the menu when a waiter who had served me in the past comes over, breaking into the manager's spiel to introduce me to him. Now the wine guy from Tommy's Wine Bar across the street sticks his head in. Then Chef Guy (hard G, rhymes with "bee") Sockrider, then another past waiter, then Tommy himself. Between each visitor, the frustrated but smiling manager starts in again on his otherwise-perfect dissertation, only to stop again thirty seconds later for the next incursion from Tommy's well-oiled service apparatus.
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Amuse-bouche at Tomas Bistro.[/caption]
Things settle down when the food starts coming. I get an amuse of a big fried oyster. A cold soup of peaches and raspberries follows. I like cold soups, but I can't say I'm wild about sweet cold soups. Chef Guy and the manager are both very high on it, though, so I go along. The Champagne used in its preparation is still fizzing a little. But I leave none of it.
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Cold peach soup with raspberries and Champagne. [/caption]
The obvious entree choice tonight is Copper River salmon. Now is the season for that, a chinook or sockeye salmon that spawns in the namesake Alaskan river. The distance the fish have to travel to spawn is alleged to be the longest such piscine singles bar in the world, at least as salmon fisheries go. To make sure things go well, the salmon involved have an extraordinarily high fat content. Fat is a good thing if it comes from fish, especially salmon.
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Copper River salmon at Tomas Bistro.[/caption]
Chef Guy performs a simple searing of the fish and sends it out with a Champagne-and-butter sauce. I thought about asking for bearnaise, which is wonderful with salmon, but I let the chef do it his way. The fillet is enormous and the eating enjoyable. But it wouldn't be for those who complain about "fishy" flavors. (Those are the flavors I come for.)
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Three colors of tomato, blue cheese, Champagne vinaigrette.[/caption]
I also come tonight with a hankering for a salad. The waiter says there are no side salads (?), but that he could fix me up with a small dish of tomatoes in three colors, Boston lettuce, crumbled blue cheese, and a Champagne vinaigrette. The salad is wonderful, especially the colorful, very ripe tomato slices.
Tommy appears again with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I tell him not to waste such a wine on me, because at most I will have only one glass, and there are no female accomplices. Tommy shrugs. "Mr. Fitzmorris, you know that whether you have one sip or the whole bottle, it is my pleasure as a host and a friend to give it to you. And I will put the rest of the bottle in the wine bar, where we will sell it all by the glass before the night is over."
Chef Guy comes over to get my appreciation of the rich salmon. I tell him that everything I ate tonight had Champagne in it. He cocked his head with a shadow of a doubt, then said that it hadn't occurred to him either, but indeed that was the case. We both smile, wondering whether this is newsworthy or not.
This is what I mean when I make a fuss over the golden era of fine dining in New Orleans. The kind that Tommy Andrade still presides over, whether the current generation of customers understands it or not. Some of us still do.
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Tomas Bistro. Warehouse District & Center City: 755 Tchoupitoulas. 504-527-0942. [/title]
