Friday, August 12, 2011.
The Impossibility Of Keeping Everything The Same.
I began packing for our trip to Chicago, leaving tomorrow at midday from Union Passenger Terminal. As always, I must get past the pile of work that I must finish before absenting myself. The biggest of these is creating recorded commercials to fill the spaces in the radio show where I would ordinarily give forth with a live, ad-lib spot. That's about twenty commercials. Fortunately, most of the ones I did for the trip to Los Angeles last month are still usable, and I have only six more to get on track before I could get on the tracks.
The took me a couple of hours after the radio show. I hadn't eaten anything significant all day. I am certain that overeating will go on for the duration of the Chicago sojourn. But hunger ate at me, and there, a half block off my route home, was Bozo's. Fried catfish sounded like a good supper.
Bozo's changed hands a couple of years ago when Chris Vodanovich retired. He was deep in his eighties and it was clearly time. But there were no obvious family successors, and Chris wound up selling the place to the man who built his Metairie restaurant in the 1970s. (The original Bozo's was in Mid-City.) What everybody (including the regular customers) agreed on was that the menu, recipes, and techniques should remain the same. Chris revealed all the secret recipes and trained all the cooks, and the restaurant would head off into a new generation without
its long-time leader and chief cook.
I have come to believe that this smooth transition may be impossible. Thinking about other old restaurants that have moved on to the next owners, I come up with almost none that did so without either changing a lot or going out of business. When Roy Alciatore at Antoine's passed away, the Guste side of Antoine's family took over and changed almost nothing. But that was in the 1970s, a time when innovation was unimportant. Even so, Antoine's had a long, slow decline over the next three decades. We all remember the brouhaha when Galatoire's management shifted from one side of the family to another. Pascal's Manale--which actually got better when the current family management moved in--is nothing like the phenom it was in the 1970s and before. All of these tried to keep things the same.
My theory is that when a restaurant has any goal that supersedes giving the customers the best possible repast, it will shortly begin to see its popularity decline. When keeping things the way they always have been wins over diner happiness, diners will be unhappy.
This diner was unhappy by what he found tonight at Bozo's, whose menu was, near as I could tell, exactly the same as it was during Chris's decades at the helm. First, the place was nearly empty. I'm sure that most of that could be blamed on the Saints pre-season opener going on, so let's forget that. Second, the gumbo was oily an otherwise unappealing. Third, the catfish were cut too thick and came out a shade soggy.
This would be no sin if it had not happened in a restaurant that was so utterly consistent that even tiny variations would be noticed--but never were. I must have downed two or three hundred cups of Chris's unique gumbo here over the years, never noticing a difference. Well, you couldn't miss it now. The catfish was always perfect at Bozo's: wild-caught fish, cut to an ideal size, fried to order. It's still all of those things, but it's. . . different. Not as good. Not horrible, mind you, but after those dozens of past meals, never wavering even a little bit, the difference stands out. No, it jumps out.
What I think is going on here is that Job One at Bozo's these days is "Make it the same as Chris used to do." Instead of "Make it incredibly delicious and alluring to the customers." I think they ought to let the recipes drift a little until they're great again.
Bozo's. Metairie: 3117 21st Street. 504-831-8666.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
