Friday, December 14, 2012.
The Advantage. 7 On Fulton Awakens.
I awakened to an interesting bit of news: the roofing job is finished. All that's left is for some guy to come by and haul away the old roof and some other junk left over from the project, and for the whole house to be painted. The latter seems no more urgent than replacing the roof was. Both jobs could have been done by fixing rather than replacing. But MA is determined. So the campaign marches on.
I have a great advantage over most other restaurant critics in that for three hours every day I hear the honest if not always well-considered opinions of other diners. I find especially useful the reports of people who call me often enough that I find their taste trustworthy. Not the same as mine, but consistent and well-informed per se.
One of these is an attorney who is not only an avid diner but also quite an adventuresome and dedicated cook. He puts more work than I do in hunting down the ingredients and dishes he wants to try. He called me yesterday, and said he went to 7 On Fulton the day before and thought it was fabulous, even though he thought the price ($60) was no bargain.
The restaurant has been on my mind, and not only because it's a four-block walk from the radio station. Although its main function is to serve breakfast and room service to the Wyndham Riverfront hotel, it's serious about its food--judging by all the special menus they send me throughout the year. Its Reveillon dinner had me curious.
So I went. The first thing I discovered was that while the Reveillon menu is indeed on the high side, that was more than balanced by a flight of wines for the giveaway supplement of $15--not per glass, but for all five glasses.
The eating began with an amuse-bouche with a subtle, invisible sauce on a crouton. Then came chicken andouille gumbo, light on the roux in terms both of color and quantity, but enjoyable enough. (My radio caller said he had the crabmeat and mirliton soup instead and loved it.)
A salad of winter greens with goat cheese and what I think were red currants came next. The other option was something called "lamb pops," with ratatouille and cherries, but I seem always to want a salad with every meal lately.
The entree made the whole meal worth coming for. Pheasant, roasted in the oven then sliced into thick demi-steaks, got a coating of bread crumbs and a pass through a buttery pan. That cooking method avoided the problem pheasant dishes often have with dryness.
Beneath the pheasant was gratin dauphinoise (the elegant French version of potatoes au gratin), made with white, carrotlike parsnips. On the perimeter were sugar plums, stewed down to a soft pulpiness. These had an interesting sweetness and savory aspect that made me wonder whether tomatoes were involved. Cranberries were here and there, as were quarters of Brussels sprouts. A very good dish, and very much in harmony with the seasons.
The wines were good, too. A bubbly to begin, then a dry Riesling from Barnard Griffin, a Pinot Grigio, Rock & Vine Cabernet, and the first Muscat de Beaumes de Venise I've had in years.
The dessert deserves its own paragraph. It was a bananas Foster tart, with phyllo pastry around the outside but a custardy something or other inside that reminded me of bread pudding. It looked and tasted marvelous, and was a nice pair with the Beaumes de Venise.
The chef appeared. Ryan Stone Ware was the chef of a short-lived but rather good restaurant in Slidell a couple of years ago. I congratulated him on the excellence of his Reveillon, and the deal on the wine. He shrugged his shoulders, and said that it's hard to get locals to come downtown for dinner here, even with the free valet parking. Restaurants have fought that problem for decades.
The bar at 7 on Fulton is usually busy, and was tonight. An unplanned but unavoidable set-piece of my Reveillon dinners appeared. For some reason, the old manual-puppet-based animated version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (the one in which Burl Ives sings a bunch of songs) is on the television in some Reveillon restaurant I try. Every year, it happens. And tonight was the night.
7 On Fulton. Warehouse District: 700 Fulton (Wyndham Riverfront Hotel). 504-681-1034.
