Friday, December 2, 2011.
Christian At The Old Christian's. Greg Picolo, Too.
I met up with Mary Ann after the show at Redemption, the new name for the restaurant known before the hurricane as Christian's. The invitation from Tommy and Maria Delaune included an interesting guest: Chris and Sonja Ansel.
After working for years in his family's restaurant Galatoire's, Chris opened Christian's in 1973. He retired from the business a few years before the hurricane, turning the reins over to Henry Bergeron, his partner since the beginning. Chris then turned his attention to rearranging the management of Galatoire's. It wasn't all his doing, but he was a prime mover in the changes that went down there a decade ago.
Chris and Sonja now live in Switzerland. The last time I saw Chris was--of all places--in the coffee aisle of Rouse's in Covington, about three years ago. He called me on the air a few times since then, from Switzerland, to tell me about the sale of Galatoire's outside the family (mostly) a couple of years ago.
As interesting as it was to dine with Christian in the former Christian's, someone of more current importance was in the kitchen. Chef Greg Picolo has moved to Redemption to take over as chef. Greg was the longest-serving chef in the history of the Bistro at the Maison DeVille, which for almost thirty years was a wellspring of culinary accomplishment. Susan Spicer, John Neal(the founder of Peristyle), Dominique Macquet and wine guru Patrick Von Hoorebeck all came to prominence at the Bistro.
Greg, who has been the Bistro's co-proprietor and chef for the past few years, wound up on the street in August. A nasty disagreement with the owners of the long-closed Maison deVille Hotel shut the restaurant down. It's now in the courts, and the Bistro is almost certainly extinct.
Greg's coming to Redemption is one of the biggest and best restaurant stories of the year. His food was always unimpeachable, in a French-Creole style. That was the kind of food Christian's always pursued in its church-turned-restaurant. Redemption's cuisine was good but not what I'd call exciting. That received a tepid response from the dining community. Greg can turn that around.
One of the first things he did was to figure out how to cold-smoke soft-shell crabs. That was the big-time non-conformist specialty of Christian's, invented by its longtime chef Roland Huet. Almost everyone ordered that. I'd say they haven't perfected it yet--the smoke flavor needs enhancement. But Chef Roland himself went through four kinds of smokers before he nailed it.
The other half of my dinner was a simple filet mignon with peppery demi-glace. It took awhile to emerge from the kitchen (something Chris Ansel noticed, too) but it touched the hunger that I needed to satisfy this night, and was great with the wines.
Mary Ann order with more verve than I did, starting with a very generous salad of shrimp and crabmeat, then finishing with grilled salmon and risotto. I'm just guessing, but that salmon had Greg Picolo written all over it.
This party took over two eight-top tables in front of the kitchen. Also there were Val and Bonnie Dansereau, who I haven't seen in ages. Val, Chris, and Gunter Preuss came together in the late 1980s to open a short-lived restaurant called Seb's in the Jax Brewery. The name (one of the reasons the place didn't make it) was made by shoving the initials of the three wives together. (Sonja, Evelyn, Bonnie.)
The others were Tim McNally and Brenda Maitland, both food and wine writers I've known for a long time. And Ron Christner, a guy who teaches Finance at Loyola, is Anjay Keswani's landlord at the Indian restaurant Nirvana, and makes wine on the side. He has a new one from Sonoma called CSquared. All of these folks conspired to make for a fun evening for Mary Ann, who was not expecting much entertainment from these food-wine heavies.
I was also very happy to see that Redemption has added tablecloths to the dining room. As beautiful as their tables were, this is too classy a place to lack full napery.
Redemption. Mid-City: 3835 Iberville St. 504-309-3570.
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.
