[title type="h5"]Friday, August 22, 2013. Oyster Shriveling Season.[/title] I don't give much regard to the old myth advising us to abstain from eating raw oysters in months without an R. I got a letter about that from a gentleman who claimed to be on the old side. He says that the vibreo vulnificus bacteria is high in the Gulf of Mexico right now, and so he's staying away from oysters. But that only affects one out of two thousand people with specific health problems, none of which I have. What is more apparent is that the oysters have finally shriveled down to summer size. Like all other weather conditions this year, the very warm water in the Gulf was late in arriving. Which is how there could be twenty-one fried oysters on the alleged half-poor boy. It comes with a cup of soup for nine dollars at the Acme Oyster House. The Marys and I were there for supper, after the usual ridiculous colloquy about where we would go to eat. (Everyone says that any restaurant would be fine, but every concrete proposal is rejected by all but the proponent.) We also had a dozen grilled oysters, which suffered the heat even more. They don't seem to contain as much water this time of year, and dwindle to almost nothing on the grill. I will probably hear a few complaints about this for the next few weeks, even after SeptembeR first. Aphorisms about food are rarely accurate. [divider type=""] [title type="h5"] Saturday, August 23, 2013. Good-Bye To Mr. Gyros, Hassan, and Chef Chris.[/title] This weekend is dark with the deaths of three prominent restaurateurs, all of whom I knew well. Yesterday Chef Chris Canan passed on. The least-known but most important fact about Chris is that he was the original chef at Clancy's when it opened in 1983. Although that restaurant has evolved a long way, I still see traces of Chris's style here and there on the menu. After Clancy's, Chris managed the kitchens (and sometimes everything else, occasionaly as an owner) of a long list of restaurants. In no particular order, they included Figaro Pizzeria, Plain Dealing on Decatur Street, Nardo's (a block from Clancy's), and Café Rue Bourbon. Aside from that, he was very active in the restaurant community, and was the president of the local chef's association in the 1980s. One could always tell that Chris was in the kitchen and knew you were in the dining room. He'd carve a pair of little shoes from carrots and potatoes and put them onto the plate, always next to one another. I asked him about the significance of this a few times, but all he would give me was a shrug of the shoulders. I don't know exactly how old Chris was, but he was close enough to my own age to make me feel his loss even more keenly. Hassan Khaleghi asked me to join him for dinner a couple of months ago, to discuss something very important. His restaurant the Flaming Torch had just suffered a major loss of business, owing to a complex illness that spread through his internal organs in recent months. I knew better than to ask why his staff had not stepped in. That's not the way Hassan operated. If somebody didn't show up for dinner, Hassan would move into that job, whether it was dishwasher, waiter, or cook. He was always there for both meals, seven days a week. But this illness took him not only off the field but off the bench. He was in the hospital for a long time, with his equally hard-working wife Zohreh keeping a lid on the restaurant. A disgruntled former employee started a rumor that the restaurant had been sold--a credible story, because Hassan wasn't there in the house. Business plummeted. That's what he wanted to talk with me about. Would I please get the word out that he was much better? (He looked fine that night.) And also that everything at the Flaming Torch was back to normal? I said of course I would, especially on the strength of the lobster thermidor he served me that night. We all owed him one--he was always at charity feeds, doling out his food for free, raising money for all sorts of causes. But apparently Hassan's battle was not over. His health declined again, and this time it would not return. He was only fifty-five, a native of Iran who moved here in 1976. He loved New Orleans and opened up a restaurant here in 1994. He took over the Flaming Torch (from a chef who really did use a flamethrower to cook with) in 2004. He came right back after Katrina--which was exactly the sort of thing a man like him would do. He relished the friendship of his fellow Iranian expatriates, and at our several Eat Club dinners he usually had an Iranian poet reciting his works. The politics of his homeland only rarely came up, at which time you could see on Hassan's face the wish that the conversation would move on. George Papapanagiotou--better known to the dining public as Mr. Gyros--left his restaurant much too early in his life, passing away today at the age of forty-seven. He got in the restaurant business as a young man, taking over the Mr. Gyros restaurant across the street from Tujague's. He moved the restaurant to Metairie in the 1980s. On the very prominent corner of West Esplanade and Causeway Boulevard, Mr. Gyros became well known even to people who never ate Greek cooking. The restaurant was very consistent for years, and a few years ago moved to a much nicer space on Severn in Fat City. What I hear is that the restaurant will go on, as well it should. A bad day, courtesy of the Reaper.
