Friday, April 9. A Q5? Kobe Beef At Ralph's On The Park. When I first began doing radio commercials for New Orleans Audi a couple of months ago, owner Van Bohn offered to let me have the use of an Audi for a few days so I could give a more informed presentation in my spots. I never took him up on that, almost entirely because of the logistics of swapping out cars. (It's a measure of how overloaded my days are that I have no time to do something so apparently simple.)
The Marys were thrilled by the prospect, though, and wanted me to score an Audi Q5 so they could tool around in it. (As if the A4 ML has isn't already enough.) With my car now in the shop and my needing to use one of theirs to facilitate what will be an extraordinarily busy weekend for me, they redoubled their efforts to persuade me to take Van Bohn up on his offer. I don't mind accepting well-meaning offers (they come to guys on the radio often, although not as often as they did, say, twenty years ago). But I feel like a mooch asking for them, and can't bring myself to do so.
Mary Ann, in her distinctive way, took this bullxxxx by the horns and called Van Bohn herself. She arranged to have me drive her car over, pick up an Audi, and leave her car there for her to pick up later. Okay. I went over early and checked in at the dealer. But I picked the exact time when Van Bohn was out of the office, and his top manager was busy with a flurry of customers who were all but waving packs of money around, wanting to close a deal right away. Nobody else knew anything about my picking up a car. I waited around as long as I could, then left in MA's car to barely make it onto the air.
Mary Ann says I make things like this happen by emitting some kind of aura.
She was not warm and fuzzy when she picked me up after the radio show. She was, however, hungry. We played the usual game, in which she had no ideas about where she wanted to go for dinner, but would reject most of my ideas. I was surprised that Ralph's on the Park rang a bell with her. I called for a reservation and we headed right over.
The place was busy. We had a drink in the bar--a very handsome room, I think--while they whomped up a window table for us. (I would have preferred a bar table, but they're working on the floors and have most of those shut down.)
The waiter was full of ideas. Richard Shakespeare--who has run the place since it opened in 2003--had even more. One matter on which they agreed was that I really should try the Kobe beef. "It's real Japanese Wagyu beef," the waiter said. "It's not raised in the Northwest. It's unbelievable! The fat is even good!"
I wasn't going to fall for this again. I've had Kobe beef a dozen or so times over the years, paying the insane prices that overfattened beef commands. I never thought it was even as good as USDA Prime, let alone the best beef on earth. When Shakes told me it was ribeye, that sealed it. Ribeye has its fans, but I'm not one of them. We began with a couple of highly offbeat but good appetizers. Mine was a Cajun Scotch egg. That's a hard-boiled egg surrounded with sausage and bread crumbs, then fried. In this case, the sausage was boudin. It was tasty enough, yet it fulfilled my once-a-decade requirement for Scotch eggs--and with less than a year to go!
Mary Ann's starter was a cylinder of lentils topped with crabmeat and a sort of chunky salsa. She likes all of those elements, and was happy with this--especially since she could find nothing in it adverse to her weight-loss program.
My next course was "oysters Rockefeller reprise." What's with young chefs these days in their determination to take this rightly world-famous fish and screw around with it? Sometimes the results are good (as they were tonight) or even excellent, but I wish they'd stop using the Rockefeller name in vain and just call it something else. Expectations arise when a classic dish is mentioned, and they're usually dashed when the cooking gets too creative. This was a casserole of oysters, spinach custard (say what?), bread crumbs, and bacon. It was a rather large appetizer for the price, especially following the Scotch egg which was more filling than it sounded. It could also have used a minute or two longer in the oven. And a new name, of course.
