Diary 8|8|2014: Revisiting The Rib Room.

[title type="h5"]Friday, August 8, 2014. A Long Time Since The Last Rib Room Repast.[/title] The Marys are in town and available for dinner, if I can choose a restaurant that they like. I could feel them steeling their defenses against my expected ideas: Antoine's, Galatoire's, Manale's, and good places like that. I throw a knuckle ball: the Rib Room. We haven't been there in a long time. During the Wine and Food Experience, I ran into the Royal Orleans Hotel's executive chef Michael Gottlieb. He said he read my not-very-glowing reviews of the Rib Room. He added that things have progressed a long way, and I ought to try it again. That is my policy anyway--not even truly terrible restaurants are ever off my list to try again. More important, the girls like classy hotel dining rooms with lots of beef. [caption id="attachment_43426" align="alignleft" width="320"] The welcome man with the butter at the Rib Room.[/caption]We arrive just as a storm cloud moves over the French Quarter. It's early in the evening, and we score one of the best tables, along the windows giving onto Royal Street. I play a game with the passers-by when I sit there. I stare out the window with my gaze at the approximate eye level of the pedestrians. Soon enough, someone slows down to take a look into the big restaurant, finds me looking deep into his eyes, as if I'd just popped into view. I've seen people levitate a few inches from the surprise of this. I'm not that horrific-looking, am I? The dinner begins well. One of the servers comes along with a plate of butter stacked twenty pats high, the layers alternating like bricks in a column. More important, this server keeps us well supplied with hot French bread and butter throughout the meal. [caption id="attachment_43427" align="alignright" width="168"] Amuse bouche in jelly jarlets.[/caption]An amuse bouche presents itself uniquely. A smooth pâté of beans is squirted into those little jars in which jelly is served in classy hotel restaurants. Aha! Mary Ann says. She saves those little jars, and as a result we must have a hundred of them at home, cluttering the pantry. Now she has a use for them! The pâté inside these jars is delicious, but there's an engineering problem with the crackers stuck inside for scooping. They break as soon as you apply any pressure at all, leaving an unreachable third of the cracker and all the pâté in the jar. Then you have to wield a knife. [caption id="attachment_43428" align="alignnone" width="480"] Oyster gratin.[/caption] The first official course brings a quintet of big oysters baked on their shells with a stuffing of bread crumbs, garlic, parmesan cheese and bacon. Sort of a cross between oysters Drago and oysters Mosca, and very tasty. A restaurant can always make a good impression on me with something like this. [caption id="attachment_43429" align="alignnone" width="480"] Ravioli with sage butter.[/caption] Mary Leigh is less pleased by her trio of ravioli, stuffed with squash and mascarpone cheese, with sage butter. This sounded better than it was. But here comes the man with the butter again, and the girls keep demolishing French bread. Who wouldn't? [caption id="attachment_43430" align="alignnone" width="480"] Royal Street floods, but only for a few minutes.[/caption] A cloud bursts outside. In a shockingly short time, Royal Street is filled with water curb to curb, dismaying drivers who don't expect a flash flood there. Just as amazing is the rapidity with which the water goes back down after the ten-minute storm ends. I've seen this alarming display a few times in the French Quarter, and it always makes me thank Bienville (or the Native Americans who were here first) for building his city in this rare well-drained spot. I have a second starter. Steak tartare has become rare (no pun intended) around New Orleans. Nobody wants to risk the danger averred in that dire warning on menus to eaters of raw proteins. I risk it. The Rob Room's steak tartare is good but a little heavy on the acidic ingredients, and lacks enough crunchy bits (parsley and onions, for example). It is also an unfinishable portion. (There is zero chance that the Marys will try so much as a particle of this.) I am also a little disturbed by the stacked, toasted bread on either side of the cylinder of raw chopped beef. X's don't seem quite right to me. Is this the new official state warning? The Marys eat Rib Room salads. That has always been good, with its light blue cheese dressing. A waitress who we remember from past lunches and dinners here shows up. I ask about the changes in the dining room, which make it darker than I remember. The bar, which used to extend into the dining room, ends at the arch between the two, and the arch is closed by large doors. [caption id="attachment_43432" align="alignnone" width="480"] Pork chop with pork belly (the parallelopiped at the rear).[/caption] I have a pork chop. How do I want it? asks the server. A hundred sixty internal temperature, I tell him. He doesn't question that. And that's exactly how it comes out. I think I will lower that five or ten degrees next time. It's well seasoned and tasty. A block of pork belly, allegedly braised for 36 hours (sous vide?), is on the side. That tightened the belly too much. Mary Ann likes pork belly much more than I do, and she didn't even care for this. But it's a side, really. The chop was where it should have been. They brine it, a step that clearly works in terms of tenderness. The Marys split the bone-in filet mignon. We order this everywhere we find it. The funny thing is, we have just about decided that it's not all that great an idea. You want something like that, get a porterhouse or T-bone. It's undercooked for the girls, of course. I help out with the redder sections. We all conclude that a steak hunger would be better satisfied at Dickie Brennan's or Doris Metropolitan, each within three blocks. The $48 price on this forces the Rib Room's prices front and center. Nothing new about that--the place has always been too expensive. You know that going in, but you try to forget during the meal. But this check's $182 plus tip is hard for MA to ignore. Don't look at me, I say. I had only one glass of Etude Pinot Noir. We are stuffed. The clouds part. The sun shines. The week ends. [title type="h5"]Rib Room. French Quarter: 621 St Louis St. 504-529-7045. [/title]