Friday, February 19, 2010. The Castaway Look Is Improved. Oysters At Royal House. I Win A New Camera! The haircut I needed before I left on the cruise was finally applied to my crown. How I can be balding and shaggy at the same time is a cruel paradox.
Before I subjected myself to Harold Klein's tonsorial ministrations, I had lunch. How could one not, at the corner of St. Louis and Royal? My usual haircut-day lunch venue is Antoine's, but I was primed to try the new Royal House. That's in the building on the uptown lake corner. For most of the last century it hosted Tortorici's. That was a candidate for Worst Restaurant In New Orleans in the 1980s and 1990s, as judged by the ratio of the edibility of its food (barely) to the auspiciousness of its location (very). It closed when Katrina hit, and remained so until a few months ago. Then the owners of a number of other restaurants in the Quarter renovated the space and turned it into an oyster bar, with a menu along the lines of what you'd find at Felix's or the Acme.
They did a nice job with the building, retaining the antique bar but reconstructing most of the rest of it. The marketing to tourists is clear: there's a tray stand just outside the door with some of the specialties arrayed on it, and a barker holding menus trying to snare passers-by.
A waiter with very long hair knotted up into a snood came by and let me grill him on the specialties. Oysters were obviously the way to go. I started with a half-dozen raw. They were big, cold, and meaty, everything oysters should be at this peak of the season. I ordered as the rest of the meal a cup of chicken-andouille gumbo, a 2-2-2 baked oyster assortment, and a fried catfish platter.
Someday I will figure out what it takes to persuade a restaurant's service chain to bring only one course at a time. Telling the waiter is obviously not enough. When this one said "I'll have the soup and the oysters right out for you," I told him. "Hold it. Please. I am in no hurry. I do not want any two dishes on this table at one time. Let alone three. Wait until I've finished one thing before you bring the next." He nodded and smiled, as if to assure me that of course such a thing wouldn't happen on his watch.
And it didn't. A different waiter delivered the baked oysters when I was halfway through the gumbo. And while I was moving oyster number three (of six) around in my mouth to keep its sauce from searing flesh (a good sign in baked oysters), yet a third waiter was moving things around on the table so he could drop off the catfish.
"What's the matter, do I smell bad?" I asked. "Trying to get me out of here ASAP?"
"No, it smells really good to me," said the waiter, missing my point.
The baked oyster trio was very good. If I were looking for something to complain about, I'd say that the red pepper content of one of the flavors was over the top. But it was billed as a spicy dish, so that's no big problem. The oysters were big and meaty again, and the sauces thick, fresh-tasting, and served hot as hell. They were as well made in their way as their counterparts at Antoine's across the street.
The catfish was cut into chunks so thick that my first thought was that this was not standard catfish but basa, the big species from Vietnam. I asked about this and was told that they were farm-raised from nearby farms. These too were crisp, hot, right out of the fryer. About an eight on a scale of ten as fried catfish goes. Good hush puppies, too.
Mulling all this over, it occurred to me that a tourist-targeted restaurant of this ilk twenty or even ten years ago would not have been nearly as good as the Royal House is. This presents a challenge for independent restaurants going after a traditional local clientele. The people who market restaurants ruthlessly--places like this and the chains, too--are figuring out how to service good food reliably.
During the day, my bid on the camera I am trying to get through eBay jumped from the $300s to the $500s. The bidding would end during the final hour of my radio show. Mindy, my producer, says that she loves buying things on eBay. This is my first time. She gave me advice about how to proceed. She especially advised that competing bidders jump in during the final seconds of the auction and grab the prize for a few dollars more.
I thought it might be fun to give the play-by-play of all this between phone calls on the air. I kicked my maximum bid up to $750, which was what I was figuring all along a new camera would cost me. That this one came with two lenses would be a bonus. The bidding went up to $631.45, with me still in the lead. Nothing happened in the last half-hour, and it was mine.
"Don't get hooked on eBay," a caller said. "It can start taking over your brain." I don't have enough money for that to happen.
Say! I wonder if tuitions for USC are auctioned on eBay?
Royal House. French Quarter: 441 Royal 504-528-2601. Seafood. Oyster Bar.
