Friday, December 21, 2012.
Sikil-Pac And Xol-Chon Kek, Not The End Of The World.
I wonder which restaurateur was first to think of having a special Mayan dinner tonight. This was to be, according to the Mayan calendar, the last day for the world as we (or they) knew it.
Several New Orleans restaurants staged dinners with that theme tonight, but I feel secure in claiming that the Eat Club was the first New Orleans organization to put such a dinner on the calendar (a regular one made of paper, not the stone Mayan kind).
Pat Galloway--boss of sales for my radio station--asked me about it a couple of months ago. I thought it was brilliant. We quickly got in touch with Chef Guillermo Peters, who is more knowledgeable and talented than any other Mexican chef I know. He came right back with a big menu for the dinner.
And a price of $125, which I thought was more than a little over the limit. Even though I'd be the first to say that Guillermo would serve a dinner worth that price, and that the only reason we might eschew it is a general prejudice against Mexican food. Many people believe that any Mexican dish must be very large and very cheap. Even if the ingredients are the same ones for which a non-Mexican restaurant might be able to charge two or three times as much.
However, it wouldn't make any sense to charge a price that would limit attendance to a small number. The price came down to $95 for six courses. Still risky, I thought. But the food was a) alluring and 2) had demonstrable roots in the Mayan lands on the Yucatan peninsula. As it turned out, sixty people signed up, most of them joking that if the world did indeed come to an end, what difference could a few dollars make?
The action began with our radio show from the Canal Street Bistro, Guillermo's current post. During my conversation with him, I learned two things about him I didn't know. First, although he was born in a small town outside Mexico City, he's half German. That explains the German food on his menu, emphasized one day a week. Second, when he came to New Orleans he worked as a mechanic on German cars for a few years. "In a German-style garage," he said. "Clean as a hospital operating room."
The dinner began with margaritas, beer, and wine, and very fresh, perfect guacamole with esquites. The latter are roasted, pepper-zipped corn kernels, one of the chef's favorite side dishes.
Next came a dish that has piqued my curiosity for years. Sikil-pac was on the menu at the old Castillo's in the French Quarter. It was described as a Yucatan dish come down from the Mayans. But it was never actually available at Castillo's. Earlier this year, when Mary Ann and I visited a Mayan site in Yucatan, I asked the guide (who claimed to be a full-blooded Mayan) whether he'd ever heard of sikil-pac. He wheeled around as if I had just said a magic word. That is the most authentic Mayan dish of them all, he exclaimed.
Guillermo's interpretation of sikil-pac was a thick soup containing tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, onions, cilantro, and lime. Authentic or not, it was wonderful. He ought to put it on his permanent Mexican menu.
The dinner would not have been for real without a few unpronounceable Mayan words. (A made up a sheet of Mayan expressions and printed them out for everybody, just to twist their tongues.) Xol-con kek is a salad of jicama root (a vegetable with a very faint flavor, but a refreshing, crisp texture) and citrus with habanero pepper. Very appetizing.
Then Tikin-xic (the "x" is pronounced like "sh"), a marinated fish baked in a banana leaf. Light and good. A salad of pulled venison meat with nopalitos (strips of pricklypear cactus pads), avocados, and a sprinkling of queso fresca. These two dishes were very good, much better than the next one: half a quail. Who ever serves half a quail? It's already hard enough to eat. The dish was saved from disaster with a salsa made with rose petals, which Guillermo said was a very distinctive Mayan touch.
I'm pretty sure that the dessert came entirely from Guillermo's fertile mind. I don't thing the Maya ate much dessert, let alone cheesecake. This one was made with, of all things, avocado and tequila with chocolate. As was true throughout the meal, all this was made with ingredients indigenous to Meso-America.
Our fellow diners could not have been more convivial. One lady brought a collection of Mexican masks from the Day Of The Dead observance. The wines and the other beverages flowed deliciously. A dessert cocktail made with agave nectar and rum was especially interesting. The dinner didn't break up until well after ten. Guillermo seemed to be very pleased by everything, as if a load were removed from his mind. He let the Eat Club take over the entire restaurant for the night, and we returned the favor by filling every seat. Nobody seemed to be worried about what might happen.
And I have lived to tell about it.
Canal Street Bistro. Mid-City: 3903 Canal St. 504-482-1225.
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