An unexplored explanation for why a person likes this restaurant but not that one, all things being equal, has to do with past experiences. Even people who are forgiving by nature often won't return to a restaurant where something went wrong--even when it wasn't the restaurant's doing.
This happened to me at the short-lived Cock of the Walk catfish house that once was on Behrman Highway in Gretna. They had a lady playing my kind of music on the piano. I asked her if she would permit me to sing a song or two with her. She seemed to be pleased by the prospect. I was so thrilled that a few notes in I felt a surge of pressure radiating across the rear of my skull. I thought I was having a stroke. (My doctor said I wasn't, and that this effect most often occurs while having sex.)
I was never able to go to that restaurant again, even though it wasn't at all the restaurant's doing that I had this scary malaise.
On a more rational note, I have a subconscious mental list of restaurants that are cold and drafty in the winter. Around New Orleans, that's probably a majority of restaurants. The cold season doesn't go on long enough that plans for a double door are followed through. They don't install them in the summer, when the drafts are forgotten.
Today the weather was cold and windy. I had forgotten that in the half-dozen restaurants that occupied 3218 Magazine Street--beginning with Turci's in the 1970s through the recently-relocated Byblos--when it was cold outside the single set of doors let the front half of the room become uncomfortable. At least for a wimp like me.
The current restaurant there is Amici. The comments from my radio show and email have all been highly favorable about this place, which opened a two or three months ago. Probably too early to know about the wintry drafts, and too late to do anything about them.
The Marys, of course, have been to Amici, and loved it. The main selling point of the place is its coal-burning pizza oven. This is the third restaurant to install that unit locally. I guess the general public became blasé after three years of wood-burning ovens made of tons of stone from Mount Vesuvius. (My prediction for the next stage: pizzas baked with blowtorches. Don't laugh. It's been done.)
The impression I took from my conversations with people who've been to Amici was that it was an ambitious Italian restaurant with a lot of range and originality. The actual menu is less inspiring. It lists the basics, and not a lot more. Most of the menu is along the lines of what we used to get at Toney's Spaghetti House. Which is not a bad thing. Toney's was great. Amici, on the other hand, needs some refining of its recipes.
[caption id="attachment_40671" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Pizza at Amici.[/caption]
Mary Ann was waiting for me with some impatience. She didn't buy my excuse about having to knock the icicles off my ears. The source of her pique was the steadfastness with which her potential advertising clients repelled her sales pitches today. It happens every year. After the holidays, it's hard to get an ad buy, no matter how much the salesman needs to get new contracts for the new year. The restaurateurs are just tired of writing checks and going crazy trying to find enough employees to get through New Year's Eve. She'll have better luck in a couple of weeks.
When I arrived, she already had two dishes on the table. One was a pizza, of which she had put away two slices. She said it wasn't as good as the one she and ML had here a few weeks ago, when she was fired up about the place. "This one is too soft and puffy," she said. "But I've been watching other pizzas come out and they look thinner and crisper. I think the guy who baked ours isn't as good as the other chef back there."
I thought it would be an interesting exercise to order two more pizzas of the same kind, each made by a different cook. It wouldn't be a bad idea for the restaurant, which could get people to order two pies instead of one, and generate some team excitement among the customers. It's no waste: no matter how much pizza we order in restaurants, we bring all of it home to our freezer. No slice goes uneaten.
Actually, I thought Amici's pizza wasn't bad at all. I agree that a thinner, crisper crust would be better. If I had to complain, I'd say that the sauce is too sweet. (MA agreed.)
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Spiedini at Amici.[/caption]
The other dish she ordered before I got there was spiedini. She got that for me, thinking she knows what I'd like in every situation. (I have decided that this is a fine quality in my wife, even when she doesn't get it quite right. Because I know that I guess wrong about her wants at least as often.) I do love spiedini, but it's a dish that varies widely. Amici's version was reasonably good, if not in a league with the ones at Impastato's or Ristorant Filippo. Not enough veal, I'd say.
Next came a chopped salad. There is a point in the chopping beyond which the salad becomes decidedly less good. They are well past that point here. The ingredients were all right--almost like those in a Cobb. But it's hard to eat a salad in such tiny pieces. They're too big to pile up on a fork but too small to stab.
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Lasagna.[/caption]
Mary Ann went for the lasagna for her entree. It was big, topped with two sauces, and satisfying enough. But as we found in the pizza, the sauce was too sweet and could have used more red pepper somewhere. This doesn't look like a place where a large number of kids need to be pleased, so why not get bold with the flavors,?
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Veal chop, with the overchopped salad underneath it.[/caption]
The big disappointment was a veal chop that looked to be about a pound, bone in. At $36, it's the most expensive item by far on Amici's menu. But veal chops are by their nature dear, so this didn't constitute a ripoff. My problem was with the preparation. They call it a veal chop milanese, which implies that it's pounded out fairly thin and then panneed. This was more like grilled, then topped with the sauce you'd find on veal piccata. Either this needs to go back to the drawing board, or the other chef needs to cook it. It didn't hold my interest beyond the quarter-eaten mark.
Clearly, I came here too soon. Amici has a bunch of wrinkles that need to be ironed out, just as every new restaurant does. The service staff is very pleasant, but not well versed in the food they're serving. The restaurant is handsome, but the tables are arranged peculiarly. Mary Ann had to duck and dodge to get past a low-hanging light fixture that blocked the passageway to and from her spot on the banquette.
And then there's that door letting the cold air in and making the front third of the restaurant uninviting on this night. The calendar will solve that.
Good point: they have a parking lot next door, with a guy keeping an eye on things. Only with that resource could there be room for another restaurant in this most eatery-laden of Magazine Street blocks.
Amici. Uptown: 3218 Magazine. 504-300-1250.
