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Tuesday, September 1, 2015.
Home, But I'm About The Only One.
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Mary Ann waited until three days ago to tell me that she's flying to Los Angeles to spend two weeks with our son Jude. What, again? Seems like she just got back. She is using my equally long and (she says) much more expensive train trip as a balance to her travels. What can I say?
She creates her usual parking puzzle, diving to the airport at the crack of dawn and leaving her car in the airport garage. Later, Mary Leigh and I travel into town in her vehicle. She takes me to the airport to collect MA's SUV. Mary Ann's instructions about getting out of the garage are simple, she says to me on the phone. Well, perhaps simple if you're the one who hid the ticket. It's in the car's change drawer, she says. I'm next in line to check out when I realize there is no obvious change drawer. I dig through the pile of junk in her console, finding many airport parking tickets and some other kinds, too. The guy behind me honks. I call her and get the usual no answer. She calls me back and with a tone in her voice that means she thinks I'm a ninny, she directs me to the secret panel--clearly designed to be inconspicuous--where there is the parking ticket. Just in time to wave it at the attendant.
I drive fast as I can to the radio station, where I try to write three commercials that have needed my attention since just after I left on vacation. I only get two of them done, but they are the urgent ones. One is about an Eat Club at Vincent's next month (what's the hurry?) and the other is about PJ's Coffee, which is proud to be a Saints sponsor, and has created a special Black and Gold Roast. I may not be the best person to recommend it, although the new bananas Foster flavored coffee does ring a bell. All that in a thirty-second spot! Am I good or what?
We have a Round Table show involving two people who will be vending food at the Seafood Festival this weekend. One of them operates a food truck. The rapidly-growing festival scene--there was a report about it on CBS News this morning--has been a boon to food trucks, who are perfectly set up to cook in the middle of a field. But how good can such fare be, anyway? Everybody loves festivals, but. . .
Mary Leigh and I will console one another--to say nothing of doing laundry and cleaning house--in the absence of the wife and mom of our house. ML has busy day making pastries at her place of work, and she is running late for the dinner a deux we were to have. We meet up at the Cheesecake Factory. It's my idea. I don't like chains much, but ML likes that one in particular, and her desires trump (no reference to the nutjob) my need to do restaurant research.
Last time I was at the Cheesecake Factory, I had a good soup. Today, I don't. It's a tortilla soup with a gritty texture and a parody of any known Southwestern or Mexican flavor. I follow that with a beet and arugula salad in which the beets weren't cooked long enough and are still crunchy in the middle. The arugula and dressing are fine, but pails in comparison size-wise to ML's enormous Caesar salad with chicken.
I have a slice of cheesecake--first one I've had after three visits to the Factory here and in other places. I make a better cheesecake for my tastes, but bringing up that consideration is cheating.
The dining room at the Cheesecake Factory is as grandiose as any other new restaurant since R'Evolution opened. The booths are dimly lit and romantic. Indeed, most people here appear to be on dates. I tell the waitress, in case she was wondering, that I am not a dirty old man with this beautiful young woman, but only her dad.
Today is the forty-third anniversary of my first published restaurant review, but I didn't think about it until I started writing this a week later.
[title type="h5"]Cheesecake Factory. Metairie: 3301 Veterans Blvd. 504-837-1818. [/title]
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[title type="h5"]Wednesday, September 2, 201
O'Brien's Grille.[/title]
Mary Leigh is working late tonight, so I go solo to a restaurant that's been on my mind for over a year without my scratching the itch. O'Brien's Grille is probably the best restaurant on the West Bank. It's primarily a steak house, managed hands-on by owner Ken Theriot, who worked at the sainted LeRuth's during the Golden Ages. I asked him how business was in this slack time of year, and he said it wasn't too bad. The place was nearly full, but without people waiting at the bar for either a table or a martini.
[caption id="attachment_48761" align="alignnone" width="480"]
O'Brien's Grille in Gretna.[/caption]
I treated myself to the latter. One martini a month is my current limit, something I am reminded of during the remembrance of Hurricane Katrina last week. I got the martini habit the night after the storm--the night when the flooding aspect of the disaster was becoming clear. I got rid of it the night seven years later, when I broke my ankle after one tee many martoonies at the Windsor Court. By some coincidence, O'Brien's Ken Theriot was there that night, saw me being taken to the hospital, and knew every other embarrassing detail. (Thank God it was Lundi Gras!) He must have been surprised to see me have a martini this night. It's things like this that make me air all my dirty laundry.
[caption id="attachment_48762" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Sirloin strip at O'Brien's Grille.[/caption]
The dinner was as fine as I expected. It began with an oyster gratin topped with bread crumbs and hollandaise. Now a salad named for LeRuth's--a nice collection of greens with Chef Warren Leruth's famous Green Goddess dressing. This is a restaurant where I can't help but eat a steak--specifically a large, thick strip sirloin. Nicely done to my oddball order (Pittsburgh style, with sizzling garlic butter).
Over bread pudding and coffee, it comes to me that what pushed me to cross the river tonight is something that came up on yesterday's radio show. One of our Round Table guests was Tom Hinyup, the new owner and longtime chef of the Sun Ray Grill, not far from O'Brien's. Tom is also the husband of Aislinn Hinyup, the p.r. director of WYES-TV. She frequently comes on to promote goings-on at the public television station. Yesterday, a caller wanted to know what kind of name Hinyup is. The caller right after him said, "It's a West Bank name." I happen to know that this came from a guy who lives on the West Bank himself.
[title type="h5"]O'Brien's Grille. Gretna: 2020 Belle Chasse Hwy. 504-391-7229. [/title]
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[title type="h5"]Thursday, September 3, 2015.
Frankie, Johnny, And Me.
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I must give some thought before I answer a question on the radio show today. Here's the premise: if the dozen best of the best-known local chefs went head-to-head against the best of the lesser-known chefs, who would put out the best food? I'd wager on the latter group. One guy I'd nominate from that group of talented unknowns is David McCelvey, the new owner of Frankie & Johnny's, the famous neighborhood seafood joint on Tchoupitoulas at Arabella. David came close to becoming a high-profile chef, but because he worked for two decades in the top ranks of Emeril's organization, he just got the job done and moved on to the next problem. I watched him a little more closely, and gained a particular admiration for how he turned Delmonico around after the restaurant had a couple of lackluster years.
[caption id="attachment_48759" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Frankie & Johnny's, inside.[/caption]
David asked me some months ago whether I'd record some commercials for the revived, renovated Frankie & Johnny's. Call me back in a few months. I told him. That was seven months ago. Today I am in the mood for that kind of eats, and figured that in these slow weeks the place wouldn't be mobbed.
David McCelvey ("KELL-vee" is how he says it) wasn't there, but there would be no sneaking in tonight. A waiter I know from his associations with Mr. B's, Galatoire's, and a few other places calls to me as soon as I open the door.
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Frankie & Johnny's outside.[/caption]
This Frankie & Johnny's is not the restaurant I remember. Which is a good thing. I never liked the old place much. This one has the same focus--fried and boiled seafood, oyster bar, array of poor boys and daily special platters, and like that.
I start with a half-dozen oysters. They're bigger and meatier than most of those I've seen lately (this is a slack time for oysters, especially since the heat wave set in a month ago). I decide to make this an all-oyster meal. Part two is something called oyster toast, in which oysters with a spinach-based sauce and a sprinkle of cheese get plopped into crescents of French bread and then run under a broiler. The process pulls a lot of water out of the oysters and onto the bread, but the flavor is good and the concept unique.
[caption id="attachment_48758" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Oyster toast at Frankie & Johnny's.[/caption]
Then comes a two-part combo of a short fried oyster poor boy with a cup of very thick chicken-andouille gumbo. Tomorrow, I will get a call from Stu Barash, a friend who is on a long-term investigation of gumbo. He says he has never seen one this thick, and sends a picture of the spoon sticking straight up from the bowl--and that's with the rice on the side.
[caption id="attachment_48757" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Bread pudding @ Frankie & Johnny's.[/caption]
I finish off with a very fine and improbably decorated serving of bread pudding. Meanwhile, the Saints are playing on the television. (How could they not be?)
Frankie & Johnny's has video poker machines. I don't like this idea, but thinking about it I recall the joints my parents and aunts and uncles used to visit, where the pinball machines were the kind that paid off. That's a note of authenticity, I'd say. Maybe video poker does belong here. For the younger gamblers, there's a claw machine.
[title type="h5"]Frankie & Johnny's. Uptown: 321 Arabella St. 504-243-1234.[/title]
