[title type="h5"]Wednesday, September 25, 2013.
An Ideal Evening At Galvez.[/title]
When you expect the worst, you get the best. Who said that? Whoever it was, he must have been out of his mind. On the other hand, it came true today.
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Mississippi River from Galvez's dining room.[/caption]
For thirty years, I've puzzled over the lack of strong success on the part of the not-too-many restaurants that have come and gone serving Spanish food. (As in cooking of Spain. Not Mexico, which is good but different.) The current exemplar is Galvez. It has all the advantages. The premises are wonderful, with the city's best view of the riverfront and the Mississippi itself. (Especially with a full moon in the background.) The chef is extraordinarily talented.
But the dinner we had tonight was a hard sell. As it has always been for past dinners at Galvez. The menu was appealing, and the price was lower than usual for an Eat Club dinner. So what's the holdup?
It could have been that I was transmitting discouragement between the lines of my promotion of the event. In July, I was at Galvez on the Fourth of July, and things went less than smoothly. Of course, the Fourth of July, with the crowds it pulls in for the fireworks, is certainly not a day by which a restaurant should be judged. But one can't completely ignore the off-notes.
However, by the end of tonight's dinner, that was the farthest thing from my mind. The last Eat Club dinner here--during the holidays in 2012--set a superb standard. Tonight's dinner topped it.
Every dish was original, made with fine ingredients making nice balances. One was even a Louisiana dish. If anyone had even a small complaint about the food and wine, he or she said nothing about it to me. I loved every second.
It began with an ordinary-looking cup of soup, made with beef and chicken with savory vegetables, all chopped into morsels. The main flavor interest, however, came from quinoa. That South American grain has a toe in the American culinary mainstream, with many supermarket products now making use of it. My daughter, who is not what you would call a daring diner, lately is making salads and pasta dishes with the distinctly herbal, spherical quinoa beebees.
The resulting soup had the texture almost like that of very coarse, runny grits. Or perhaps oatmeal. Not the taste, though. That was just plain wonderful. I must get the recipe for this.
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Lobster, shrimp, avocado and Belgian endive salad.[/caption]
The second food module contained less mystery but just as much flavor interest. Cooked shrimp and lobster were marinated in a salsa fresca, then spooned with cubes of soft, absurdly ripe avocado into a trio of Belgian endive leaves, looking like skiffs. Very straightforward, this. Both enjoyable in its flavors and temperatures, as well as appetizing for the next course.
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Blackened red snapper, corn macquechoux, Galvez.[/caption]
That was a straight Cajun dish, perhaps dressed up for the occasion. Red snapper--a candidate for best fish in our waters--was coated with Creole seasoning and more or less blackened. The fish sat there atop a shallow mound of corn macquechoux--crisper than what usually goes under that name--with a few scattered lima beans. Already we had a complete flavor array, blending marvelously well. But for good measure, here was some rice tinted green by its admixture of herbs. A thoroughly fabulous dish from one end to the other.
The original plan was for us to go to dessert at this point. I thought it was necessary to bring the price down to $65. It was also an experiment. A growing number of people who come to our dinners--particularly the women--have been suggesting that our repasts are a little too big, with perhaps one too many wines. So I cut two courses out of the original in exchange for a $10 reduction, hoping we could goose up attendance a bit.
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Filet mignon"shepherd's pie" at Galvez.[/caption]
If only I had know that the Galvez folks were planning on including the small filet mignon from the original menu anyway--and leaving the price at $65--I'm sure we could have filled the house. As it was, my announcing this change on the air resulted in a half-dozen last-minute joiners. And that almost never happens.
The surprise extra course maintained the excellence of everything that came before. It was a layered dish (the menu made reference to shepherd's pie), with the filet making two of the layers, and various mixtures of cooked kale (it's everywhere these days), carrots, peppers, and bacon in between. The sauce was a demi-glace flavored with orange oil and chipotle peppers. All it needed for completion was a glass of Ramspeck Cabernet--and we had that.
We finished with a charming little dessert bearing the name beignets. Not New Orleans style, but broad fingers of dough flavored with apple. It came with a demitasse of intense hot chocolate. Nobody could figure out what to do with the latter--dunk, drink, or pour over. But every strategy worked.
If Galvez could put out this kind of food every day--and I think they can--you wouldn't be able to get into the place. Except for that Spanish jinx. What a thing to turn potential first-timers off. Spanish food is more like New Orleans food than even Cajun food is. We ought to love it as much as we love French or Italian eats.
Maybe someday that will happen.
Here were the wines. The second and third were the good ones.
Tolentino Pinot Grigio, Mendoza, Argentina 2011
Marques de Caceres, Deusa Nai Albarino, Spain 2011
Ramspeck Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley 2010
Segura Viudas Brut Cava (sparkling), Penedes, Spain
[title type="h6"]Galvez. French Quarter: 914 N Peters. 504-595-3400.[/title]
