Tuesday, July 30, 2013.
Free-For-All At The Round Table. A New Four-Star.
This morning, when Mary Ann told me who was on the round table radio show today, she gave an evil laugh. She had booked a mix of people who would create a strange reaction. Like oil and water--or, no, more like bleach and ammonia. Just as those two can create fumes that can kill you, Mary Ann's mix of guests came close to murdering the show.
All three of the people are great guests in their own right. One was neutral: the thoughtful, creative, soft-spoken Stephen Schwartz, the owner and chef of the four-star Mat & Naddie's. He would not cause any kind of problem, although I had to open a space between the other two for him to say what was on his mind.
The other two were Vicky Bayley and Louie Finnan. Vicky is the single most stylish person in the New Orleans restaurant community, and one of the most creative. Over the years she founded and set the standards for Mike's on the Avenue, Artesia, 7 On Fulton, Mike's on the Avenue a second time, and a number of other, briefer projects in between. Before all of that, she was the general manager of the Fair Grounds. And she's beautiful. Perfectly groomed all the time.
Louie Finnan, on the other hand, looks exactly like what he is: the owner of a diner. It's called Louie and The Red Head Lady--the perfect name for it. Every impression you get from this paragraph is accurate. Louie's place went from local notoriety to national, after Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" television show featured Louie and the Red Head Lady forty-eight times.
Having Vicky and Louie in a free-wheeling conversation on the radio is like a romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow and. . . Guy Fieri. No congruence between the two whatsoever. Every exchange disintegrates into absurdity, the degree of which is measured by the volume. And both Vicky and Louie are talkers, with something to say about nearly everything, preferably with a laugh in the mix.
This would ordinarily be perfect for the round-table show, which I describe to guests as being more like sitting around a table in a restaurant than being interviewed. But Vicky and Louie took over. More than a few times, when I was trying to include Steve Shwartz in the parlay, Vicky and Louie had their own separate conversation going on. It was chaos.
Good, though.
After cleaning up the mess in the studio and washing the wine glasses, I went out to dinner at Dijon. One more dinner there, and I'd have material enough for a CityBusiness column. This dinner was like all the others so far: interesting food, most of it very good, served attentively in a dining room with few other customers. (But it is a Tuesday in summer.)
A delicious part of this meal happened before the first paid-for dish arrived. The bread here is wonderful: crusty, rough-hewn, lots of flavor. The amuse bouche was the best yet. Big lumps of crabmeat around a sort of double-decker sandwich with melon as the bread and a green, herbal-flavored gel in between.
Then a fantastic soup, an almost fluffy flow of pumpkin, with a little nest of tiny strips of bacon in the center. It sounded like a cool-weather job, but it was so light and the bacon so interesting as a textural and flavor contrast that it was a pleasure to eat.
Now something strange, billed as a fried oyster salad with kale. But the kale was also fried, into delicate leaves about ready to fall apart. Leaves of radicchio contributed the only salad-like quality to the dish; even the sauce tasted more like a butter than the vinaigrette it was. The oysters were big and crisp. A collection of nice surprises, in other words.
The cochon de lait entree was the least interesting part of this meal. The pig was presented several ways: pork shoulder falling apart, pork belly, a grilled loin choplet, and cracklings. Under and around were turnip dice, black-eye peas and greens, with a mustard vinaigrette sharpening everything up. I thought the whole thing was lacking in seasoning. But it certainly is right up with the times.
For dessert, I had the calas for the second time here. I'm happy whenever I find this century-old Creole confection rising to the surface, as it so rarely does. I like Dijon's version, which has a cinnamon-sugar coating that eliminates the need for either the usual powdered sugar or syrup. And a small ball of ice cream.
I think this place has finally reached the level its owner had in mind when he opened a year and a half ago. All they need now is a busier dining room.
Dijon. Warehouse District & Center City: 1377 Annunciation St. 504-522-4712.
To browse through all of the Dining Diaries since 2008, go here.
