[title type="h5"]
Monday, July 27, 2015.
Bathroom Man. NOFS. For Red Beans.[/title]
The sole meal of the day is Selection B (New Orleans Food & Spirits) from the standard Monday choices (the Acme, NOF&S, the Camellia Café, and Zea). All of those offer reliably good red beans.
Our supper conversation concerns bathroom renovation. A guy who Mary Ann found came over to take measurements and figure our what needs to be done. He is the first person to look at the master bedroom disaster area with repairs in mind in many years.
The first was my Rummel High School classmate and building contractor Wally Negrotto. That was so long ago that Wally has long since retired. Another guy brought in mainly to build the plumbing for the new kitchen also assessed the bathroom. Finally, Mary Ann's brothers--one an architect, the other an engineer--also took a look, again many years ago.
All of these knowledgeable professionals were in complete agreement with me that the master bathroom is by far the most urgent repair project in our house. It is now so bad that we don't let any outsiders look at it.
While the bathroom kept getting worse, we replaced the entire roof, built out two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor, downsized the master bedroom to make room for a tiny office for me, and fenced in three acres to contain the dogs Suzie and Barry. The big bathroom's priority has always been "Last." Which means that any other project, no matter how trivial, always gets in line in front of the bathroom. The gladness in my heart that we may soon get down to it is only slightly diminished by the cash outlay the project will entail.
[title type="h5"]
Tuesday, July 28, 2015.
Camellia Grill. Reuben.[/title]
It's another one of those days when I leave the radio station at six-thirty (the programming bosses tell me that they need more questions for the Opinion Poll this week, so I have to dispatch that first), then roll uptown on Magazine Street, thinking that I surely will find someplace to sup among the 84 restaurants on that crescent-shaped avenue, but then I don't.
After Magazine Street peters out (literally, at its intersection with Leake Avenue), I have all the restaurants in the Riverbend neighborhood to choose from. And that's when I thought about the Camellia Grill.
I had about given up hope for the Camellia Grill. It has a golden past, rich both with my own experiences and those of most other Orleanians. My peak meals there--and they were indeed as magical as the restaurant's reputation had them--were in the 1960s and 1970s. Then Katrina came and the Grill was left to molder for many months. Then Hicham Kodr bought the place. He has a few restaurants of note around town, the Gumbo Shop and a partnership with Emeril at NOLA among them. He performed a sensitive renovation of the Camellia Grill, retaining its layout and feeling. He also opened a second Camellia Grill in the French Quarter. But he and his predecessor got into a long legal battle that did no good for anybody involved--least of all the customers. A few weeks ago the trial ended, with Hicham the apparent winner.
This will no doubt allow him to give the old place the attention it needs. All the meals I've had at the Camellia Grill in recent years have been far below what I remember. (I am willing to believe that the Wistful Palate Effect, in which memories become sweeter as they get older, may have played a role in this.) With fingers crossed, I step inside.
The menu is much larger than I remember, particularly in the sandwich department. All the dishes from the Good Old Days--with the exception of the plate dinner specials they used to have in the 1960s--are still here.
The waiter is snappy and attentive. Harry Tervalon would have approved of his style. (Harry, perhaps the best waiter in the history of the local restaurant business, worked at the Camellia Grill for around fifty years.) I get a Reuben sandwich. It comes with fries. The fries are the best part of the meal. They are not fresh-cut, but they are very good anyway, crisp out of the fryer and served in a pile big enough for four people.
[caption id="attachment_35346" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A well-made Reuben sandwich.[/caption]
The sandwich has the standard problem of Reubens the world over: the bread disintegrates from the juiciness of the corned beef and the sauerkraut. This can be avoided by melting the cheese on the inside faces of the rye bread before adding the juicy stuff. (The cheese forms a barrier. It works.) Additionally, the corned beef on this sandwich is cut along the grain, not across it, making it difficult to eat. (You lock down your incisors to take a bite, and when you pull the sandwich away the slices of corned beef come sliding out.)
While I sat there, an elderly but well-groomed woman comes in with a man who seems to be her father. They sit next to me. He does not seem to be fully in control of his memory, and asks the same questions again and again. On the other hand, he accurately remembers a lot of old details of the Camellia Grill. He loves the immense omelette. (The Camellia Grill in the Hicham era has gone from two to three eggs in the omelettes.) I can't help but hear their conversation. Or of wondering how far--or how near--I am from being just like this old feller. If I make it that far, I hope Mary Ann or Mary Leigh or Jude take care of me as well as this woman does.
Sometimes I think it may be a good idea to stay away from restaurants saturated with my memories.
[title type="h5"]Camellia Grill. Riverbend: 626 S Carrollton Ave. 504-309-2679. [/title]
