[title type="h5"]
Wednesday, July 29, 2015.
Barbecue At. . . Commander's Palace? Stormy![/title]
Mary Ann calls in the middle of the radio show with a great idea. Why don't we go to Commander's Palace for dinner tonight? The magnificent restaurant, always cited in surveys and reviews from the least to the highest sources as the best restaurant in town, is not hesitant to roll out wild new ideas. They have one such right now: a promotion called "White Tablecloths And Barbecue." Which brings forth the immediate image of a crisp, starched table-topper with smudges of barbecue sauce all over its surface.
This is the theme for Chef Tory McPhail's current "Chef's Playground," the point of entry for his more daring leaps into culinary adventure. Mary Ann has some doubts about Commander's Palace, but none at all about barbecue. Smoky, tender meats falling off bones are among her favorite eats, right up there with burgers and fries. She makes the reservation. I will see her at six-thirty.
Or so I thought. During the five o'clock hour, a large, very dark cloud moves into the downtown area. By five-thirty, lightning and torrents are in the vicinity. Nevertheless, with the Commander's reservation in mind, I leave the studios promptly at six, umbrella in hand.
I stop in the lobby, whose large expanse of windows shows that this is no typical afternoon shower, but a full gale sending down sheets of the hardest rain walking uptown on Magazine Street. A manhole cover just outside blows out of its manhole from the pressure of air and water in the drainage pipes just below. I hear it clang again and again as it blows off then lands back in the hole, shooting blasts of water in every above-ground direction.
I think there's a possibility that a window may shortly be blown out. I go back up to the radio station's eighth-floor offices and into the WWWL studio, where I bring up the weather data. Winds, sez the official readings, are steady at 47 miles per hour, gusting to 65. It would take only nine more mphs for the gusts to be within the definition of a hurricane.
They never get that high, but they don't slow down, either. I sit in the dark in my studio, watching the Mississippi River Bridge disappear and reappear. It's about a half mile way. The currently defunct but saved from extinction World Trade Center is only three blocks from where I sit, but the rain obliterates it too, off and on.
I enter the newsroom, on the other side of twin-glass windows from mine. The Causeway is closed! I learn. Street flooding is scattered here and there around town. Mary Leigh is working in a part of town that know to be liable to street floods. I call her and get an "I'm okay, I'm all grown up" response.
Mary Ann, meanwhile, has been at Commander's Palace for the last hour and a half. She says that the servers are taking very good care of her. She also has studied the barbecue menu, and says that it is not exactly what she had in mind. I could have told her that. You don't go to Commander's to get your own mental ideals of dishes, but to get entirely new hybrids of the standards.
[caption id="attachment_48472" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Oyster with granita at Commander's Palace.[/caption]
The storm dies down at around eight. I collect my car and head up Magazine Street, which historically has rarely flooded. Not even for May 3, or for Katrina. But it is flooded here and there tonight. Around Felicity Street, I barely miss splashing into something like six inches of water in both Magazine gutters. I will later learn that in the two hours it rained, one and two-thirds inches have fallen in New Orleans.
At Commander's, it's as if nothing happened. The car valets are taking them in and letting them out. The dining room is nearly full on the first floor. I don't check out the upstairs Garden Room, but I don't see anybody head up that way. Dan The Wine Guy has news of new additions to his wine list, from which I choose a Spanish red curiosity. He also says that four or five members of his wine team--one of whom is also on the kitchen line--have passed the tests to become certified sommeliers.
[caption id="attachment_48471" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crostina with burrata and anchovies.[/caption]
We get raw oysters on the half-shell topped with a coriander-flavored granita. I get a second: MA doesn't eat raw seafood. She does have some fried oysters while I have a peculiar-looking crostini with burrata--the hyper-rich mozzarella variation that's hot on the edible top forty right now. I am missing only a piece of Commander's famous garlic bread. I ask our waiter, and he says it will be right out.
[caption id="attachment_48469" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pork BBQ that doesn't pass MA.[/caption]
MA's entree is some kind of pork "barbecue." I didn't quite catch the description, but MA says it went against one of her rules: "Layman's food should never be gourmet-tized. Barbecue at Commander's? What was I thinking?"
[caption id="attachment_48470" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Barbecue antelope, probably the best dish I've had this year so far.[/caption]
I more than take up her slack with my enthusiasm about the smoked antelope loin, injected with beef fat. The latter is an idea I've always thought had possibilities, especially regarding low-fat meats like antelope. (They run around so much that the stay very fit.)
This antelope dish--which also includes an antelope tamale, tomatoes, and queso fresca--is far beyond merely a curiosity. I think it's the best dish I've had this year so far. I will have to think about that a little more, but I'm pretty sure it wins that contest. A thin black sear encloses juicy red meat with a superlative flavor package. It looks like a sous-vide job. How much the beef fat and the cheese add I don't know, but when something tastes this good I don't question the pleasure.
I do question the garlic bread. Where is it? Second request. Third request. Finally, it shows up after my fourth asking. But we are not in the natural life cycle for the famous butter-and-herb bread crescents. In contrast, everything else about Commander's vaunted service was right up to standards.
[caption id="attachment_48474" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Creme brulee, with all crunch.[/caption]
The desserts, for example. Mary Ann doesn't really eat dessert, and I chose something I haven't had at Commander's before. What we get are six desserts, ranging from the Creole cream cheesecake from the Emeril era, and the late Jamie Shannon's unique creme brulee under a fleur de lis.
The people booked for "The Turn" (when those with 6:30 p.m. reservations have eaten and gone, and the second shift of diners arrive) show up in substantial numbers, the rainstorm be damned (or dammed, as the case may be).
Things are beginning to slow down for the summer, Says The Wine Guy. But the place looks prosperous to me.
[title type="h5"]Commander's Palace. Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave. 504-899-8221.[/title]
