Friday, August 9, 2013
Barcadia. The Hamburger Frontier Continues To Expand.
I leave the radio station every day by way of Tchoupitoulas Street's Restaurant Row. As I head Uptown it will bring me past Rene Bistrot, Tommy's, Tomas Bistro, Emeril's, A Mano, Cochon, Annunciation, Eleven 79, and Dijon.
I intentionally left Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar off this list until now. It's the first place I come to, and by far the busiest. Its sidewalk tables on the corner of Girod and Tchoup are almost always full, unless it's cold or raining. Heat doesn't seem to abbreviate the crowd, which is already well under way when I pass in the six o'clock hour. If I am working late, I will see that the population has grown, with a lot of people standing around, most of them holding bottles of beer.
Digression: When did drinking beer out of a bottle become cool? Isn't a cold glass or mug or schooner better? Or is this just another piece of evidence that what was good in my time is still good, but passe?
I can't help but notice the Lucy's crowd, for two reasons. For the most part, they are on the young side, well dressed (the women, anyway), and have a reasonably affluent look. Second, that sure is a lot of people for a restaurant whose food is just okay. Especially given that right across the street is Rene Bajeux and his much more comfortable but usually empty restaurant.
Some months ago I walked along Tchoupitoulas in the other direction for dinner. I noticed that a crowd with similarities to Lucy's was strung along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and bar in the Ambassador Hotel. It's changed names enough that I can't remember what it's called now. In subsequent months, this gathering seemed to be as consistently lively as the one up the street.
And lately there's a new hangout, drawing upon the same demographics. Barcadia is on the lower floor of a parking garage at the corner of Lafayette and Tchoup. I watched it build for what seemed like over a year. Then it opened with a big bar, lots of beer, and a large room filled with arcade machines. Not the modern X-Box kind, but the old ones I remember from a time when people my age played Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and other games that now look like antiques. Apparently they have become cool again.
The Marys have been trying to talk me into having lunch or dinner with them at Barcadia. Mary Ann, in particular. After her first lunch there, she came home babbling about freshly-ground beef, fresh-cut fries, house-made buns, and all the other things she holds with a regard equal to my thoughts about oysters Bienville and tournedos Rossini.
Of course, she asked the guys who run the place--food truck operators from Baton Rouge, but with more aptitude and higher standards than that implies--to appear on the Round Table show. She is, of course, trying to push her kind of food onto my plate. They way I do to her. (What a wonderful life we lead!)
Last night, to avoid my driving home after the big Eat Club affair at Le Foret, I left my car in the garage and MA brought me in with her. The tradeoff: I would have to join her for lunch at Barcadia today. Why not? I haven't yet had the 1.2 hamburgers I am allowed for the month of August.
The bubbly waitress had lots of suggestions and was ready for any oddball order we might have. How about fried pickles for an appetizer? I said. "Great," said the waitress. "We make the pickles in house!" They were eight bucks, but I almost forgot that after the eating. Coated with the same kind of cornmeal-corn flour mix commonly used for fried catfish, they were crisp, greaseless, and almost too hot to eat. They came with a jalapeno aioli that I liked better than MA did (but I have a taste for pepper heat).
I had more hot peppers on the hamburger, along with the other standard dressings. The burger was well made--by hand, it looked to be, although I've been fooled before. The texture was a bit finer than I like, but it was cooked as ordered, and seared to a modest crispness at the exterior.
The bun was interesting. It resembled brioche, I told chef Nick Hufft. Who by this time had discovered our presence. (Coincidence: I ran into Nick in the elevator just yesterday. I tell you, only 500 people live in New Orleans.)
"It's a cross between brioche and Hawaiian sweet bread," he said. "We bake it ourselves." Well, this answers a question we asked on the radio show some months ago: who has a good new approach to the hamburger bun?
Fresh cut, thin fries completed this ensemble of food. Meanwhile, Mary Ann was going through three pork mini-shanks, advertised as being in the Korean style. MA liked it well enough, but was thrown off by her expectation that it would be sort of like barbecued pulled pork.
I don't think lunch is the time to be here. It's was busy enough, but most people did what we were doing: ate simply and quickly, and were gone. In the evening, the place has been quite well attended, with socializing being the major goal. I'm sure that's the intention.
As time goes on, I will have to try some of the other burgers, notably the one with a fried egg on top. In a way, Barcadia's food is a rebirth of the Fatted Calf of my youth. That place, across from Pat O'Brien's, was the first in New Orleans to offer a couple dozen different ways to have a hamburger. The only ones I remember were "Adam and Eve: Undressed" and "The Fanny Hill: Too Raw To Describe." The place had a nickname: The Padded Thigh.
Our lunch at Barcadia finished off my hunger for the day. I checked out the crowds on Tchoup, but headed straight home, very much in the mood to plop down and listen to music of a kind I will never hear here.
Barcadia. Warehouse District & Center City: 601 Tchoupitoulas St. 504-335-1740.
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