Thursday, July 7, 2016.
Touring The Mediterranean, In My mind.
My dinner idea comes to me in the sun-blinded zone of the I-10's Carrollton Flyover. I see few gaps in the traffic, in which I must weave through four lanes to the Metairie Road exit. Mary Ann says I drive like an old man, but I wish she had been there to watch me pull this one off.
My ultimate target on Metairie Road is Vega Tapas Café. I got a note from them just this morning telling me that the annual Mediterranean Tour begins today. It's a gimmick, but an amusing and tasty one. Vega Tapas covers all the cuisines bordering the Mediterranean Sea, from Morocco and Tunisia across North Africa, around the Levant to Lebanon and its neighbors, through Croatia and Cyprus to Greece, to Italy then France to end up in Spain. In each virtual port your passport (a little book issued by Vega Tapas) is stamped as you go from one dinner to another.
Each of the cuisines is served in four courses, the portions the right size to allow for a generous but not gut-stressing repast. The price is $40, including coffee or tea. If you'd prefer wine, there are pairings for each of the courses--or you can have a glass or two of something. If you manage to get all the spaces stamped, you get. . .a good feeling.
I've never managed to fill up my passport, but I'm suckered in by the idea. The dining room is filled with people talking about the Tour and enjoying the game.
[caption id="attachment_52146" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Dining room at Vega Tapas Cafe.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_52145" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Two gazpachos.[/caption]
The food is worthy of discussion, too. I begin with the soup of the day--not part of the Med Tour, but too good to resist. It's a gazpacho made with two different recipes--one the normal red, the other a pale orange. What's interesting about this is that the two are made into a yin-yang in a single bowl. The flavors are very different and very good.
[caption id="attachment_52144" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tabbouleh salad.[/caption]
The Mediterranean aspect begins with a very large tabbouleh salad, loaded with parsley, tomatoes, cracked wheat, garlic, lemon, olive oil, and the rest of the Middle East standard ensemble, crunchy and fresh.
[caption id="attachment_52143" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baba ghanooj.[/caption]
Now comes a lighter style of baba ghanooj--the Lebanese eggplant dip, with even more garlic than its predecessor. This is the first Middle Eastern dish I ever ate, back in the 1970s. I liked it then and now.
The entree is grilled kibbe, with four patties of ground lamb, parsley and bulgur wheat. It looks as if it started out as a meatball and got squashed down about half the way to becoming a hamburger patty. This was the weak spot of the dinner, but not bad.
The dessert is a moist, semi-sweet rice pudding, flavored and sweetened by orange flower water and pistachios. It was more than I felt good about eating, but that's not a very strong criticism. I may be there next week for the Italian menu, premiering on July 11.
Vega Tapas Cafe. Old Metairie: 2051 Metairie Rd. 504-836-2007.
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Friday, July 8, 2016.
Fausto's Is About Seafood.
We invite Doug and Karen Swift to dinner at Fausto's. They liked the place a lot, but hadn't been there lately because. . . well. . . they couldn't think of a reason. It's not the first time I've heard that from others. It has something to do with the small size of the restaurant, and the occasional difficulty of getting a nearby parking space.
It has nothing to do with the food, which is excellent to a startling degree. Owner (and brothers) Fausto and Rolando di Pietro and their family have been in the New Orleans restaurant business long enough that the Creole marks are all over the Sicilian base. The strong department of the menu is its seafood, which rivals or surpasses that of every other New Orleans Italian restaurant.
[caption id="attachment_52140" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Stuffed mushrooms at Fausto's[/caption]
We begin with a plate of crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms and an arancino the size of a baseball. It's more than enough for the four of us to split. The mushrooms are good, but the arancino is even more impressive--a ball of rice tinged with tomato sauce, and stuffed with mozzarella and ground beef.
[caption id="attachment_52141" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Arancino.[/caption]
An assortment of salads comes next. By now we are up to date on the lives of our sons, who were classmates at Christian Brother's School in sixth and seventh grade, then at Jesuit High School. That's how we know one another, although MA keeps up the friendship by calling Doug--who is an MD--whevever she needs medical advice.
Also at this moment I run out of liquid refreshment--an Italian Chardonnay. Instead of going ahead with that, I order a drink I have not watered my palate with in a long time: a half-and-half. Simple enough: equal amounts of white and red vermouth on the rocks. (It's known as a "cin-cin" if you make it with Cinzano vermouth.) Back in the 1970s I often imbibed this, often asking for pure red vermouth.
[caption id="attachment_52139" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Saltimbocca[/caption]
The entrees are terrific--mine in particular. Parmesan-encrusted fish (it's puppy drum tonight) is so spectacular in its sharp butter sauce that everybody wants to take a taste of it. Not that the Swifts have missed out on the good food. The veal saltimbocca has always been a great specialty at Fausto's. A soft-shell crab amandine is hard to argue with, as well. Mary Ann has the simplest dish: fettuccine alfredo with artichoke hearts.
Chocolate cheesecake for the Swifts, a wedge of spumoni for me, and the usual nothing for MA's dessert. Doug and I begin discussing the World Wars, because we are both in the middle of audio books on the subject. Doug also likes my Beetle, since he apparently had one at some point in his past. He has studied the mechanics of the current Beetle, and approves my purchase.
We'll be back at Fausto's again, when we may take up the topic of cats versus dogs. Karen has five cats, and would like to
have ten. I see her point, even though I only have three. Doug and MA are both dog people. But how does that affect the right number of kitties?
Fausto's. Metairie: 530 Veterans Blvd. 504-833-7121.
Dining room at Vega Tapas Cafe.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_52145" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Two gazpachos.[/caption]
The food is worthy of discussion, too. I begin with the soup of the day--not part of the Med Tour, but too good to resist. It's a gazpacho made with two different recipes--one the normal red, the other a pale orange. What's interesting about this is that the two are made into a yin-yang in a single bowl. The flavors are very different and very good.
[caption id="attachment_52144" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tabbouleh salad.[/caption]
The Mediterranean aspect begins with a very large tabbouleh salad, loaded with parsley, tomatoes, cracked wheat, garlic, lemon, olive oil, and the rest of the Middle East standard ensemble, crunchy and fresh.
[caption id="attachment_52143" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baba ghanooj.[/caption]
Now comes a lighter style of baba ghanooj--the Lebanese eggplant dip, with even more garlic than its predecessor. This is the first Middle Eastern dish I ever ate, back in the 1970s. I liked it then and now.
The entree is grilled kibbe, with four patties of ground lamb, parsley and bulgur wheat. It looks as if it started out as a meatball and got squashed down about half the way to becoming a hamburger patty. This was the weak spot of the dinner, but not bad.
The dessert is a moist, semi-sweet rice pudding, flavored and sweetened by orange flower water and pistachios. It was more than I felt good about eating, but that's not a very strong criticism. I may be there next week for the Italian menu, premiering on July 11.
Stuffed mushrooms at Fausto's[/caption]
We begin with a plate of crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms and an arancino the size of a baseball. It's more than enough for the four of us to split. The mushrooms are good, but the arancino is even more impressive--a ball of rice tinged with tomato sauce, and stuffed with mozzarella and ground beef.
[caption id="attachment_52141" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Arancino.[/caption]
An assortment of salads comes next. By now we are up to date on the lives of our sons, who were classmates at Christian Brother's School in sixth and seventh grade, then at Jesuit High School. That's how we know one another, although MA keeps up the friendship by calling Doug--who is an MD--whevever she needs medical advice.
Also at this moment I run out of liquid refreshment--an Italian Chardonnay. Instead of going ahead with that, I order a drink I have not watered my palate with in a long time: a half-and-half. Simple enough: equal amounts of white and red vermouth on the rocks. (It's known as a "cin-cin" if you make it with Cinzano vermouth.) Back in the 1970s I often imbibed this, often asking for pure red vermouth.
[caption id="attachment_52139" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Saltimbocca[/caption]
The entrees are terrific--mine in particular. Parmesan-encrusted fish (it's puppy drum tonight) is so spectacular in its sharp butter sauce that everybody wants to take a taste of it. Not that the Swifts have missed out on the good food. The veal saltimbocca has always been a great specialty at Fausto's. A soft-shell crab amandine is hard to argue with, as well. Mary Ann has the simplest dish: fettuccine alfredo with artichoke hearts.
Chocolate cheesecake for the Swifts, a wedge of spumoni for me, and the usual nothing for MA's dessert. Doug and I begin discussing the World Wars, because we are both in the middle of audio books on the subject. Doug also likes my Beetle, since he apparently had one at some point in his past. He has studied the mechanics of the current Beetle, and approves my purchase.
We'll be back at Fausto's again, when we may take up the topic of cats versus dogs. Karen has five cats, and would like to
have ten. I see her point, even though I only have three. Doug and MA are both dog people. But how does that affect the right number of kitties?
