Friday, December 16, 2011.
Gala Ends The Eat Club Year At Le Foret.
Someday Mary Ann and I will get a pied a terre in New Orleans--preferably downtown. (I sure wish I still lived at 729 Camp Street, where in the 1970s I was one of the residential pioneers, along with neighbors George Schmidt and Jack Stewart.) One of the most welcome benefits of having an apartment in town would be the ability to change clothes before going out to a formal event.
But as it is, I had to walk around the station in a tuxedo, well before the official tux-donning hour of six. On the other hand, I like to make believe that I am in black tie when I speak on the air.
Tonight's Christmas Gala Eat Club dinner at Le Foret was our second. That which makes it officially annual. Mel Leavitt once told me that the expression "first annual" was laughable, because an event is only annual if a year intervenes between two iterations. Tonight also made the dinner a tradition, because anything that happens more than once in New Orleans qualifies.
This Christmas-season dinner began at Brennan's in (I think) 1994, and persisted with only two breaks: 2005 (of course) and 2009. That year, Brennan's said they didn't want to do our annual Reveillon anymore. I don't think they're mad at me, although my sense of such things is dull. I thank them for all the great years, in which the wines alone were worth more than they were charging us.
Last year, Danny Millan at Le Foret gladly picked up the slack. The price went up by $40, but it was about time. And I doubt Le Foret came any closer to breaking even on the deal than Brennan's did. It was a big hit, so here we are again. We have a new chef, freshly hired away from Stella!
Our crowd took over the entire main dining room. How could the restaurant afford to do that? Danny said that all told he had seven private parties in the restaurant that day. Indeed, two were going on at the same time ours was.
We had an hour of open bar while the twenty-eight people convened. (Bizarre irony: almost that many people have written to me since the night of the dinner, asking me when it was and whether they could get into it.) It was a mix of very familiar faces (some attendees have been coming every year for over a decade) and entirely new and younger ones.
In the bar and at the tables we had a nice surprise: an excellent modern jazz trio played extraordinarily and without any amplification at all. We could hear them just fine, and didn't have to talk over their mellow, sound. I gave a moment's thought to trying to do a song with these guys, but they left no gaps in their ensemble. Very clean, engaging sound.
The first food to arrive was Le Foret's semi-famous "soup, salad, and sandwich" amuse-bouche. Respectively, this was a demitasse of butternut squash bisque, a cylinder of cucumber stuffed with salmon tartare, and two rabbit-shaped crackers with a dab of rabbit liver mousse between them. Cute idea; perhaps after two years it's time for a new one, but it's still new except to regulars.
The second course made me glad I was sitting next to my wife. A generous slice of foie gras of the highest order, seared ideally, sullied with no sauce of any kind, sitting atop a slice of brioche. Those who didn't like duck liver could balance its flavor with the gelee made from Sauternes. (We also had the sweet Bordeaux wine itself in our glasses--Chateau Haut-Mayne Sauternes 2008, to be exact.) But for me, I want that foie gras flavor in full. I ate mine, then I ate Mary Ann's. (She doesn't like it at all.) It brought me close to the limit for that wonderful stuff. (There is one, I learned many years ago.)
Next came a lobster salad with arugula and a dressing made with Champagne instead of vinegar, so we could have another wine. (Frank Family Napa Chardonnay, 2009, bigger than I expected and a great favorite around the room.)
The best course of the evening was upon us. Here was fresh red snapper, cooked to a sexy, vivid softness. It seemed almost alive, until you got purchase on the lightly browned edges. Atop this was crabmeat brought in from Higgins in Lafitte that morning. Everything was mellowed with beurre blanc. This was simply perfect--better than any other fish in my memory.
I was nuts about the wine, too. Meursault--first I've had in ages. Lighter on entry than I was ready for, but with a big middle. Couldn't have been better with the fish.
The meat course--a basic seared filet mignon with a lightened red-wine demi-glace--had a tough act to follow. Only the innate animal appeal of meat allowed it to hold up its end of the dinner. The wine--a 2007 Jordan Cabertnet--was a luscious help.
And now I was hearing from people who wanted me to take their reservation for this dinner next year. The best of signs.
We finished with too much dessert. A Sacher torte is too rich, sweet, and chocolate-intense to begin with. Slip some bananas Foster around it, and the needle is pegging (a radio expression for when the channel is being fed too well). I could only eat about a third of it, and then turned my attention to the twenty-year-old Quinta do Portal tawny port. And some coffee, please.
Mary Ann was already gone. Four hours of dinner is too much for her. So I walked the six blocks back to the radio station, making everyone think I was a waiter.
I experimented with something new tonight. I had no cocktails, and never finished a glass of wine. I went up to the radio studio and took a nap before heading home. I was unafraid of being stopped by an officer, and was maybe too clear-headed for a good night's sleep.
Le Foret. CBD: 129 Camp. 504-553-6738.
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.
