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Saturday, July 25, 2015.
Mandeville Seafood.
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On weekends I go through the emails and other communiques, looking for eating news worth reporting. What I find in today's batch is mildly distressing. Twenty-fifteen has been the most volatile summer in recent memory. I come to that conclusion when a reader asks me how many new restaurants opened, expressed as a monthly average. I come up with three per month. But the same statistic suffices for restaurants closed this year so far. We started the year with 1410 restaurants. As of today, the population is 1406.
As I proceed further through the messages, I learn that Squeal Barbecue on Oak Street is one of the closers. It was in the front line of the great barbecue movement of the last few years. I was never wild about the place, but a lot of other pig-lovers seemed to keep it pretty busy. I guess it wasn't enough. That location has seen quite a toll of restaurant extinctions over the years.
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Redemption.[/caption]
According to its website, Redemption has given up its a la carte restaurant operation, and has gone over to private party catering. Weddings and the like. The building--the 100-year-old church that once housed Christian's--is ideally adapted for that. Not many restaurants have such a spacious dining room. But I will miss not being able to go there for dinner. Our only hope there is that Redemption made the same move last summer, and wound up reverting to a la carte in the fall.
Here on the North Shore, Tony Bosco has decided to back out of the restaurant bearing his name in the TerraBella neighborhood of Covington. He franchised that restaurant while continuing to operate his excellent, ever-growing, sixteen-year-old Italian café in Mandeville. But it doesn't look as if the TerraBella location is a lost cause. The word is that Osman Rodas--owner of the five-star Pardo's and Tchoupstix, both in the same strip mall in Covington--is taking over the TerraBella Bosco's. He will perform some renovations, but beyond that we know little.
No shortage exists of new restaurants. The one generating the greatest amount of chatter is Compere Lapin. (CBD: 535 Tchoupitoulas. 504-599-2119.) The hook here is that the chef made a big splash on one of those so-called reality food shows. My skim of the menu revealed little that excited me, but it's too soon to make any assessments. The restaurant is in a renovated hotel on Tchoupitoulas a block from Poydras. I can see it from my radio studio.
Making the strongest point that plenty of restaurant customers is available is Shaya (Uptown: 4213 Magazine St. 504-891-4213). That's the Israeli-style café named for chef Alon Shaya, partner with John Besh on the project. (He's also the day-to-day boss at Dominica, his job since that pizza specialist opened. I have no doubt that Shaya is a good place to eat, if only because of the difficulty of getting a table. A friend calling for a reservation at seven recently was told that the only opening that day was at four in the afternoon. I'll be waiting for that one for awhile, too.
Today, Mary Ann and I go to lunch at Mandeville Seafood for the second time. It's a combination raw-retail fish market and neighborhood-style seafood café. I get a catfish basket whose main ingredients have come immediately out of the fryer. Golden brown, maybe cooked a little longer that optimal. MA has fried shrimp on a salad. Prices are low and portion enormous. I'm not a fan of those wax-paper-lined plastic baskets that have become the current method of service for inexpensive seafood houses. How much can they possibly save on using those instead of plastic plates?
The fish market part of Mandeville Seafood is the more urgently needed. They have fish that I find lacking in even the better restaurants. The market has had red snapper on the ice every time I've looked.
I get the radio show on the air at two in the afternoon and keep it going until it's time to sign off at four. Busy show. Several listeners wanted to know why Mary Ann isn't co-hosting it with me, but I don't have a good answer. It's just one of those things that happen, and are best left alone.
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[title type="h5"]Sunday, July 26, 2015.
Zea. Tonic And Tonic. Rotisserie Chicken. Grilled Tuna.
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I think this has been the hottest week of the year so far. The sun burns upon us with such insistence that all week I haven't been able to find a tolerable thirty minutes for my crucial walk--the one that is chipping away bulk from my frame. When clouds do appear, they herald storms with so much lightning that I'd be a fool to walk around in them--if I even could, with the mini-ponds blocking my way.
The only good news is that I am getting ahead on the hundreds (this is no exaggeration) of hours of work I must finish before I can take a train vacation in three weeks.
Mary Ann and I had a few testy moments in the past few days. About what, I'd rather not remember, let alone write about. But we warm up enough to allow our Sunday dining habit to go forth at Zea. I am about sick of iced tea, so I indulge in a new drinking habit: tonic and tonic. A gin and tonic without the gin, with the lime included, and served in a rocks glass. At Zea, they do not charge me for a refill. However, it doesn't taste like tonic water. It did last time, so there's some other problem.
Mary Ann has a half chicken from the rotisserie, with the herb-garlic glaze. I have what I think is a new dish: seared tuna with two sauces, one of them with an Asian flavor and the other a melting ball of butter and orange juice. It's quite good, although the slab of tuna is less generous than I visualized.
Tom's Words Of Dining Semi-Wisdom #589-58-23: Visualizing a new dish in a restaurant before seeing it for the first time is probably asking for disappointment.
