[title type="h5"]
Thursday, July 23, 2015.
Fury's.[/title]
I made the mistake of telling Mary Ann some months ago that I am much less comfortable with dining alone than I used to be. She is a caring person, and so she took on this minor trouble of mine, and has lately been more frequent a dining companion than she was. Certainly more than when the kids were there to receive her attentions. But if she goes out with me, she will eat. And she doesn't want to eat, because she's trying to get fit. Need I go on? What's a guy to do? Is there a solution to this conundrum?
I dined solo today at Fury's, where I have not been in many months. They told me that they've just done some renovations. To be frank, I couldn't tell what has been changed. It doesn't matter. Fury's is one of those restaurants where alterations are more likely to trigger disturbance than gladness. It's their old-timey operational methods that make it what it is. The fresh-ingredients-only thing, for example. That's not part of the current farm-to-table groove, but a throwback to the 1950s, when restaurants like John Fury's knew no other way.
I take the last table in the back, in the bar. I talk with Frank Fury for a few minutes. He's upset about a caller to the radio show who complained about a substandard meal at Fury's. I get one of those for every twenty or thirty reports I hear about the place. I tell him not to worry about it. I know of no restaurant that doesn't goof something up every now and then.
If I may shoot forward from Diary Time to Real Time, last night at Commander's Palace, its extraordinary service staff required four requests before they brought me some of their wonderful garlic bread. If it happens there, it happens everywhere.
[Return to Diary Time.] I begin my dinner with seafood gumbo, which has always been great at Fury's and is again tonight. Then their free-with-entree, all-iceberg (another blast from the past) house salad, dressed with the very garlicky (and that's the way I like it) creamy Italian dressing.
Then speckled trout amandine. Is it fresh Louisiana fish? Yes it is, came the expected answer. I'm also told I can have it grilled, broiled or fried. I get fried. I am offered meuniere butter, and accept it. In lieu of fries, I get spaghetti bordelaise. Then bread pudding. It's a good meal, exactly what I expected to find--including the mysterious renovations.
The sunset on the Causeway tonight was extraordinarily beautiful. You could see the entire red dish drive below the horizon. No green flash, though. I've seen that only once: on the Big Island of Hawaii, while sitting on the black-lava beach outside my straw-hut hotel hut in the Kona Village Resort. It was over in less than a second, but it was no illusion.
[title type="h5"]Fury's. Metairie: 724 Martin Behrman Ave. 504-834-5646. [/title]
