Diary 8|11, 12|2014: Corky's Gone. Cibugnu Here.

Written by Tom Fitzmorris August 19, 2014 12:01 in

[title type="h5"]Monday, August 11, 2014. Good-Byes. Corky's Goes Away. [/title] It happens every year. En route to fall and its increased customer counts, there's a desert to cross. A few restaurants run out of gas and pull off to the side, where the owners get out and walk away, not soon to be seen again. The effect is never as bad as it seems, but I am in command of the statistics. The New Orleans restaurant biz hit an all-time high of 1414 restaurants in May. Since then it's drifted downward to 1396 active places now, for a drop of 1.3 percent. To put this into perspective, a few years ago the restaurant count in San Francisco went down nine percent in a year. Our restaurant community is much more stable. Even so, it seems to me we may be reaching a plateau. The most noteworthy closings this summer were Ristorante Carmelo in Mandeville, RioMar in the Warehouse District (which the owners plan to reopen with a new concept), and Iris in the French Quarter. CorkysLogoPigAs of today, there's one more: Corky's. Yesterday was its last day in Metairie, after twenty-two years. It was the first branch of a hyper-successful barbecue restaurant in Memphis, opened by a guy named Sam Chawkin. Sam and I had lunch a few months before he opened Corky's here. He had no doubt that it would be as big a hit as it was in Memphis. I was a little dubious, but at the same time I thought he had something. Real barbecue was almost non-existent in this in this area. That meant not much competition. But is also indicated that New Orleanians didn't have a strong taste for barbecue. It wasn't until after Katrina that barbecue caught on here. It is now a borderline mania. A wave of new barbecue places washed over Uptown and Downtown. But by that time Corky's was old news. Being in Metairie wasn't cool, either. But the smoked meats at Corky's were always very good--particularly the pulled pork and the ribs. I will miss it. (All the other locations of Corky's around the South are still in business.) Sort of in honor of Corky's, all I had for supper was the rest of that Cuban sandwich Mary Ann made for us yesterday. It had pulled barbecue pork inside. From Dickey's, actually. [divider type=""] [title type="h5"]Tuesday, August 12, 2014. Cibugnu. [/title] I feel sort of sad about Cibugnu. Not because they didn't take my advice--given well in advance of their opening--that they should think of a better name. It's pronounced "chee-BOOHN-you"--a problem right off the bat. One thing I'm pretty sure about after writing about restaurants for forty years is that potential customers like to know how to say the names of the restaurants they're considering. [caption id="attachment_43463" align="alignnone" width="480"]Cibugnu. Cibugnu dining room.[/caption] Late last year Cibugnu took over the former Leonardo's, an adept pizzeria and maker of the most familiar pasta dishes. The location is hip: next door to Herbsaint and near several other popular new restaurants. Sidewalk tables pick up where Herbsaint leaves off. Seemed to me that Leonardo's did reasonably well. I always liked their food, and all reports from The Audience were good. Then I got the press release telling of the new name and concept. The latter was about Sicily. Seems to me we've been hearing a lot about Sicily's unique food lately. We already know all about its non-unique food, because that's where New Orleans Italian cooking came from. But every cuisine has its set of oddities, and that's what Cibugnu would concern itself with. I almost went a few times, but was daunted by the menu and service style."We know all about this authentic food and will now teach you everything about it," it seemed to say, "but first, let's review how to pronounce our name." The reason Cibugnu is on my mind now is that Mary Ann is in love with the restaurant next door. We've been to Marcello's ongoing party--the place is always busy--several times lately. Marcello's also serves its version of Sicilian food. How did two such places wind up cheek by jowl? To be fair, we have to try Cibugnu. Mary Ann goes along, but not happily. She doesn't like the environment of Cibugnu, which is dark and stark. It has not changed much since the Leonardo years, except that the pizza oven--a wood-burning brick job--is hidden from view. [caption id="attachment_43464" align="alignnone" width="480"]Cibugnu pizza. Cibugnu pizza.[/caption] The waiter proudly offers house-made water. No kidding, they add their own bubbles, the way soda fountains used to. I get a glass of wine, too. We order pizza. It's not as good as I remember Leonardo's achieving. Too much cheese, for one thing. [caption id="attachment_43465" align="alignnone" width="480"]Elicoidali pasta at Cibugnu. Elicoidali pasta at Cibugnu.[/caption] Next course: a small pasta dish called "elicoidali," a new word for my Edible Dictionary. Rigatoni tossed with corn, squash, black truffles, ricotta and basil. This is indeed a lot like the food I found in my visits to southern Italy, with a fresh taste and pleasant textural contrasts. [caption id="attachment_43466" align="alignnone" width="480"]Arancini. Arancini.[/caption] In front of me now are arancini. The golf-ball size spheres of rice are tinged with a little tomato sauce and centered on a plug of white cheese in the center. This is delicious, and has an interesting property referred to in the dish's nickname. In Italy, they call this "suppli al telefono"--literally, "telephone wires." When you cut an arancino in half and lift that half to your mouth, the cheese in the center stretches across the void. When done well--as it was here tonight, the festoons of cheese become comically long. Like telephone wires. Taste good, too. The waiter hadn't heard that story, so I swap it to him for his elicoidali. Now we're even. [caption id="attachment_43467" align="alignnone" width="480"]Lamb chop at Cibugnu. Lamb chop at Cibugnu.[/caption] Mary Ann is now finished eating, and departs. I go on to ask for the waiter's choice between the T-bone steak and the lamb chop. He tells me where the meat was from (a datum I now allow to go in one ear and out the other, so little difference do I observed as a result of these pedigrees). I choose lamb. He goes back to the kitchen to learn that this is a medium chop (whatever that means) and had been brined. It is very juicy--you could almost say wet--and trimmed less severely than chops tend to be. (For the chefs in the audience: it was not "Frenched.") I enjoy it well enough, but I couldn't stop thinking that this is the sort of thing one eats in Tuscany more often than in Sicily. This conundrum is always there: regional differences don't mean much when they're removed far from their homes. [caption id="attachment_43468" align="alignnone" width="360"]Watermelon granita at Cibugnu. Watermelon granita at Cibugnu.[/caption] The waiter recommends watermelon granita for dessert. A granita is a lot like a sno-ball, but flavored before it's shaved. This had a superb watermelon flavor, and even after I go through a large drift of the fine red ice, I can't stop eating it. By this time Mary Ann is long gone, and I am sitting there for close to two hours. A group of six arrives as I pay the check. That is the total attendance of the restaurant through my stay. Yes, it's Tuesday in August. But the restaurants on either side are busy. I started off this entry by feeling sad for Cibugnu. No matter how good or authentic its food becomes, it will evade popularity as long as it speaks at its customers instead of with them. Cycling out the name and brightening up the dining room would help, too. [title type="h5"]Cibugnu. CBD: 709 St Charles. 504-558-8990.[/title]