Friday, August 3, 2012.
A Metaphor. Hours Of Mixed Fun At Andrea's.
My favorite form of entertainment is being asleep. Not because I'm a sluggard, but because my dreams are tremendously amusing. I had one last night that has already grown into a large shtick around our house. In the dream, I told Mary Ann that my role in our family was strongly analogous to that of the toilet.
That's when I woke up, and my conscious mind took over. A toilet is reliable. When someone in the house needs it, the need is urgent and immediate. But the toilet is always there, ready to do its job. (If it isn't, then something is drastically wrong. But that's rare.)
After the toilet comes though once again, it is never thanked, or even given a second thought. See, nobody likes a toilet. The toilet is by definition dirty and smelly, even if it's just been thoroughly cleaned or brand-new. The toilet is unthinkable in the living room, or anywhere but its own special room, whose door is kept closed to hide it from view. (You may well be a little upset that I'm even writing this for a publication mostly about food.) Yet you will again and again have your moments with the toilet, then go back to taking it for granted.
The parallel is temptingly perfect. In my family, there are Mother, Daughter, Son, and Toilet. I don't really feel so persecuted, but gosh, I love this caricature. All day the Marys and I expanded on it. They thought it was as funny in its aptness as I did. I almost have enough material here for a stand-up comedy routine.
Jude arrives from Los Angeles tonight. There's a wedding in the family over the weekend, and on Monday, he will join the Marys on week-long trip to London for the Olympics. No reservations have been made anywhere. They don't even know what flights they're on. It's a Mary Ann classic. With my insistence that we should have plans and buffers, I would only get in the way of this, so I am staying home. But again I say: nobody likes a toilet.
Toilet volunteered to collect Jude at the airport. As usual, he came in on the flight that comes in half past midnight. I would be in town anyway for the radio show and a bit of commercial recording afterwards.
That still left me with five hours to kill, so I went to the restaurant where I know any amount of my time can be frittered away: Andrea's.
The bar was full when I arrived. I took a small table in the main dining room and commenced a somewhat bigger meal than I really wanted. Although I managed to be unrecognized at first, it wasn't long before Chef Andrea sent me a plate of his good tomato-topped, garlic-and-oil drizzled bruschetti. I ate all the tomatoes, little of the bread.
Then an order of angel hair with pesto. This was very different from what I remember in past meals here, but still very good. Olive oil, garlic, basil and other herbs, tossed with the fresh pasta. I could have eaten all of it but I left half, as my regimen demands I do.
What triggered my coming here in the first place was Andrea's commercial on the radio show today. He said he had some nice pompano. He must have sold it to an earlier customer, because these were small fillets of the fish. Funny thing about pompano: it seems to appear in only two sizes. If it's the size of a man's hand, it's great, and not just because you get more to eat. If the fillets are about three inches long and an inch and a half wide, not only is the portion likely to be skimpy (which is okay with me), but the magical pompano flavor will not be there. I was served the latter tonight.
Andrea showed up at dessert time. A good thing: the zuppa inglese was wonderful, light, fresh, and full of fruit. Andrea had something new for me to try with it: an after-dinner cordial like limoncello, but made with strawberries instead of lemon. Very nice.
It was now nine-thirty. Three hours to go, so we went to the Capri Blu Bar, which I see the chef has renamed the Capri Blu Bistro. It still held a few customers, listening an entertaining pianist and singer who wears a straw boater (like a barbershop singer!) and goes by the name Uncle Wayne. He was playing too loudly, of course, but that's inevitable. He and Andrea persuaded me to sing a couple of songs, but I wasn't in the mood, and I couldn't quite stay in the key he was playing.
A group of eight or so hip-looking, laughing young men and women appeared. Andrea said that Uncle Wayne is a college professor in music or theater or something like that, and these were students. Having a degree in theater myself, I recognized the dynamic immediately. These young people love to perform, and here was their chance. Good singers, all of them. They sang and cut up with Uncle Wayne one after another. Oh, what I would have done when I was that age to have a venue like this to live this dream! (It would have been better than that other dream I had today.)
They were still singing and laughing when somehow the time to pick Jude up arrived. And there he was, also full of creativity, energy, happiness, and life.
Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th St. 504-834-8583.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
