[title type="h5"]Thursday, August 28, 2014.
Saints Make Lonely Business At Jubilee.
[/title]
The last pre-season game for the Saints. It is already very clear that football will take a major toll on local restaurants again this year, because both the Saints and LSU are supposed to be big winners. I can't help knowing a little of what's going on. Three times a day I sit in front of a microphone, waiting for my cue to return to the Food Show, while our station's definitive sports announcers hold forth on the gridiron goings-on. Otherwise, I continue to maintain my lifetime perfect attendance record at both the Saints and LSU games.
Mary Ann says we should have dinner at Jubilee. Of the half-dozen or more restaurants that have come and gone in this picturesque, historic bakery in the center of Old Mandeville, I think Jubilee is the best. Despite that, the place is all but empty. With no TV screen trained to the game--and thank Jubilee there isn't one--there are no customers.
With nobody else to compete with for the restaurant's resources, we get the best table in the house--in the corner of the back room, looking out into the courtyard. I ask Mary Ann whether she'd like to sit outside, but it's too hot even for her. Oh. . . it's still wet from the rain, too. However, those two things have not stopped her in the past.
The server gets our sympathy. She will not earn a lot this night. If Chef Tory Stewart is here, he makes himself scarce.
[caption id="attachment_43671" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Baked oysters at Jubilee.[/caption]
But the food is fine as usual. We start with an enriched version of baked oysters, the sauce a creamy take on Oysters Drago. Mary Ann ordered that, not me. Baked oysters are an automatic buy for me, usually.
[caption id="attachment_43673" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Salmon and beet salad at Jubilee.[/caption]
Instead, I get a beet salad with smoked salmon, boiled eggs and dark brown bread. It's like something out of a kosher deli, but with sauce Gribiche--a sort of hybrid between white remoulade and tartar sauces. Why is this sauce suddenly semi-hip? I seem to be running into it a lot.
[caption id="attachment_43672" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Redfish Pontchartrain at Jubilee.[/caption]
Mary Ann defaults to her favorite white-tablecloth dish: redfish Pontchartrain, seared fish with crabmeat. It's everything she hoped for.
I'm in a carnivorous mood, but I wasn't up for the big filet tonight. What's this panzanella pork loin? It's panneed pork, one of the house specialties at our house. The panzanella aspect comes from the salad greens and vegetables on top of and below the cutlet. It has a rustic quality--perhaps a bit too great of one. If I had been cooking this, I would have cut the pork thinner and cooked it a little less. But what are restaurants for, anyway?
[caption id="attachment_43674" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bread pudding at Jubilee.[/caption]
The bread pudding is different and excellent. The basic brisk is lighter than it looks, and topped with a ball of ice cream streaked with caramel. That's a nice combination of flavors.
The conversation at our table is mostly Mary Ann's speculation as to how she will get along with our soon-to-be daughter-in-law during our visit, which begins tomorrow. Fortunately, MA is always in a good mood before she leaves town, so this gets a brighter view than usual.
The proximate reason for the trip is that Jude wants to go to The Taste, a big food grazing event put on by the Los Angeles Times. For some reason--perhaps to show off what a gourmet he has become--Jude wants me to attend. It might also be because last year I got a press pass. I don't seek or get many press passes anymore, since one freebie is about all even the most highly-credentialed person can get. I couldn't score even that this time around. But frankly, I'd rather spend the same dollars (five hundred for the four of us) in restaurants.
[title type="h5"]Jubilee. Mandeville: 301 Lafitte St. 985-778-2552. [/title]
[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Friday, August 29, 2014.
To Los Angeles. Scarpetta.[/title]
The usual afternoon summer showers that blow up into maelstrom are sweeping through the area as we make our way to the airport. It reminds us of a hurricane in 2005 that brought the same sort of weather down on another flight of ours. Hurricane Cindy, despite sending its eye directly over Kenner, could not stop the Eat Club from going to Alaska. We just had to leave a day early. Which was not easily done with forty people in need of reticketing.
Remembering Cindy further reminds me that today is is the ninth anniversary of another hurricane that same year. What was the name of it again?
Mary Ann is tickled pink to be admitted (courtesy of our American Express Platinum cards) into the Delta first-class lounge. They have espresso and café au lait, popcorn and cookies, salads and soups, and even cocktails--all gratis. But we are there only fifteen minutes when it's time to board the plane.
The flight is smooth, the captain deftly weaving a clear path through the New Orleans storms. After a delay on arrival-- the jetway won't swing into position--we meet up with Jude, out there ready to whisk us off to Beverly Hills.
Mary Ann has a room booked for us in the Crescent Hotel, in Beverly Hills. She read about it in Conde Nast Traveler, which made it look like a nice place. What really grabbed her was a secret room in the hotel that rents for $99 a night. She managed to book this space, thinking herself very lucky. We soon found out why it's so inexpensive: it's a tiny room jammed into an odd corner of the hotel. It looked fine to me, but my standards are much below those of Mary Ann. We browse elsewhere in the Crescent, but it is too old for MA's pleasure.
Fortunately, other paid-for reservations awaited us at the Beverly Hilton, which is more along her lines of hostelry. In fact, two sets of reservations were in place (bringing the total of hotel rooms in our inventory up to three). This would dog MA for the duration of the visit.
We are in no hurry to get to the hotel. We walk the block from the rejected Crescent (whatever else you can say about it, it's in a great location) to the rather swanky Montage Hotel property. There we find the restaurant Scarpetta. Mary Ann knows all about it: it's a hot Italian place, spacious and handsome, overlooking a tree-topped open plaza with sidewalk tables.
Jude's fiancee Suzanne pulls up, making our dinner party complete. It is almost six. With a speed that takes my breath away, someone says we should eat at Scarpetta, since we're standing in front of it. I second the idea. The vote is unanimous. How the hell did that happen?
[caption id="attachment_43675" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The famous $24 spaghetti at Scarpetta.[/caption]
All the outdoor tables are booked for the evening. We get the next-best table, next to the windows inside looking out. Mary Ann looks over the menu and confirms the existence of spaghetti with red sauce (as in no meatballs, sausage, or veal) for $24. That fact seems to be the leading datum in circulation about Scarpetta. I mentally write off the $300 it will cost the four of us, and begin to enjoy the evening.
A Negroni. No need to explain that cocktail anymore. It has gone from being an obscure classic a decade ago to one of the hippest tipples around. Jude gets a Moscow Mule. He wants to see whether they would serve it in the traditional copper mug. They don't. He doesn't drink a lot, but he always does when I'm around. Something about recasting my opinion of him as a full adult. It is not necessary. I came to that conclusion when he was sixteen.
[caption id="attachment_43676" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Strozzapreti ("priest-Strangler") pasta at Scarpetta.[/caption]
The server is knowledgeable and happy to engage my goofy questions and challenges. What does he know of this "strozzapreti" pasta dish? "Priest strangler!" he says correctly. The story has a few variations, but they boil down to the dish's being so good that overeating priests ate too much of it and strangled themselves. More important is that the semi-tubular pasta is hand-rolled and irregular, with a red sauce of veal and pork and broccoli di rape. We all agree that this is indeed very good.
[caption id="attachment_43677" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Eggplant-stuffed mezzaluna at Scarpetta.[/caption]
So are mezzaluna--small, thin, slippery ravioli, stuffed with eggplant. We like the aforementioned Spaghetti Alla Two Dozen Bucks, too, and its thick, dark-orange sauce (a bit of cream in there).
[caption id="attachment_43678" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Black cod at Scarpetta.[/caption]
Only two entrees get ordered. I have fennel-dusted black cod, skin on. This is a Pacific fish one most often encounters in sushi bar around New Orleans but almost nowhere else. I get a very generous slab of the stuff, and we successfully share it.
[caption id="attachment_43679" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Mary's chicken at Scarpetta.[/caption]
The other secondi is roast chicken with mushrooms more or less dissolved into the sauce, an excellent work on the subject. There is also a foam. When will that end?
Nobody is interested in dessert. I ask for the cheese plate with four choices. Only two cheeses from the list are available, with a third borrowed from the salad girl. That's the only thing that went wrong all night long. I guess L.A. is not yet hip enough for cheese courses. But it isn't in New Orleans, either.
"Scarpetta" is the word for the collecting the residue of the sauce on your plate with a pieces of bread. There's a word we have always needed.
As I write this nine days after the fact, I discover one more fact about Scarpetta: it's one of a chain of six restaurants around the country. It didn't feel like a chain, but that's what the chains are doing these days.
Jude takes us to the Beverly Hilton and we check in. Mary Ann doesn't like the room. It has a balcony as ordered. But a solid wall tall enough to make me stretch to look over its top blocks any kind of view. Mary Ann insists this is not the room she reserved, and that's when we discover that we have two reservations here. We move to another room. It has a view of downtown L.A. and (closer) Century City, but more than either of those we see a great expanse of rooftop.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris September 08, 2014 12:01 in
