Friday, August 26, 2011.
Side Effects Of Food Writing. Delmonico.
People tell me that listening to my radio show or reading my writing makes them hungry. They seem surprised when I tell them that producing my end of the conversation has the same effect on me. Today I was updating the review of Emeril's, and I became ravenous for the food I was writing about.
I wanted to succumb to the temptation, but the flagship restaurant was too busy to take me. Emeril's Delmonico could, however. Not that Delmonico was empty. By halfway through the dinner, the two main dining rooms on the first floor were full, and people were heading upstairs. (Although that might be for a private party.)
I have a soft spot for Delmonico. I was a regular customer in the pre-Emeril days. After he reworked everything I liked it again, enough so that up until the hurricane I thought it was the best of Emeril's local restaurants. It has not been as good since the storm. For the past couple of years the emphasis has been on various kinds of appetizers, with a much smaller number of entrees.
This has resulted in a few high points. The charcuterie may be the city's best, even with all the salumeristas out there lately. The pork cheeks are nothing but great. Delmonico is one of only three restaurants in New Orleans that dry-ages its own prime beefsteaks. (The other two are the Crescent City and The Besh.)
But the rest of the menu is unmemorable--as in, I literally can't remember much more of it, even though I also fail to recall anything I thought was humdrum. This could be blamed on the full mental hard drive in men of my age. But I don't think so. Whenever I've dined at Delmonico lately, I have a hard time picking out a logical meal, because the menu isn't logical. It seems to have been patched together from many different restaurants, without a unifying style.
Tonight's dinner was a perfect example of this. I began with an assortment of three gazpachos. Only one had tomato. The other two had bases of roasted garlic (I think) and watermelon. This was imaginative, well presented, and delicious, with interesting contrasts among them three.
Then came an offbeat version of pasta carbonara, with chunks of guanciale and eggplant scattered in a lightly creamy sauce tossed with homemade fettuccine noodles. Which were too thick to cook right without getting gummy. No delicacy here. Filling, too.
The entree descended from dishes Emeril used to do in his Commander's Palace twenty years ago. It was a grilled pork chop from a Berkshire pig. Not eye-popping big the way we're used to (just the right size, in other words). It was crisscrossed with sashes of Benton's bacon (very salty and smoky) and topped with a fried farm egg. The brown sauce was like a pan gravy. Polenta underneath the whole shooting match. I liked every part of this, but it didn't really come together. You eat the bacon, then some of the egg. A bit of the chop. A dab of polenta. Nothing seems to depend on anything else in the dish.
Maybe this is some kind of menu statement. If so, it doesn't advance the image of the restaurant. At least not in my mind. Maybe it makes overflow customers from Emeril's happy. At least those among them who haven't actually eaten at Emeril's, a much better restaurant these days.
So, to put this another way, the hunger I gave myself by writing about Emeril's this morning was not sated by dinner at Delmonico. But I can't say I don't like being there. Bob Andrews's piano and singing are entertaining. They make good drinks in the bar (I had a good new one combining Cognac, Bourbon, and bitters in a variation on the Manhattan). The service staff, after a few clumsy years, has become smoothly efficient again.
Delmonico. Lee Circle Area: 1300 St Charles Ave. 504-525-4937.
