Friday, February 22, 2013.
Veal Parmigiana Every Four Years.
The mechanics at KT got my PT Cruiser's power steering working again. How's this for luck: the cheapest piece of that system was what went bad. When they told me it would only be $225, I felt as if I had to ask for something else to bring the bill up to the $650 I was expecting. Yeah, wait a minute. I need new spark plugs, I told them. I hadn't changed them since I bought the car nine years and 170,000 miles ago. They called back to confirm that they had almost never seen plugs in worse condition. They also had to change the spark plug wires, not only because they were old, but because squirrels have been chewing on them.
We had a busy radio show, after which I recorded a couple of commercials before heading out into the drippy weather to seek out dinner. It was one of those nights when nothing sounded right to my appetite. I wound up at my restaurant of last resort, the last place before I get on the Causeway, the Peppermill.
I was taking my first sip of Manhattan (I have a habit of ordering certain cocktails in certain restaurants, and Peppermill = Manhattan) when a young man who called himself Vinnie stepped up. He was owner Vincent Riccobono's son, he said. I shook his hand and congratulated him for being the first member of the third generation of Riccobonos to serve me at one of their tables.
I quizzed him on the menu. He mentioned a dish that was the farthest one from my mind at that moment. Or any other moment, for that matter. Veal Parmigiana. I consider it a cliche. My cliche threshold is low. A lot of people view veal Parmigiana a fancy dish, and spaghetti and meatballs the cliche. Maybe I got the idea from the title of the Italian chapter of an old New York restaurant guide: "Beyond Veal Parmigiana."
On the other hand, when I am told by a restaurant staffer that I should try a dish, I usually do, even if that's not what I figured on eating. So veal Parmigiana it would be. Well, it's been four years since the last time.
It was as good as advertised, and then some. It went well beyond the standard definition by bring semi-layered with slices of panneed eggplant, as well as the veal. All that was covered with red sauce and cheese, the run under the broiler until the cheese browned bit the way it does on a pizza. It was a bigger serving than I could finish, and I went through more of the angel hair pasta with red sauce than I planned on.
Before the veal Parm, I had a cup of a creamy seafood chowder and a house salad with the Italian vinaigrette. That dressing is a throwback to the Buck Forty Nine days of the Riccobono restaurant collection. It tastes exactly the same now as it did when I ate at the Buck Forty Nine in the late 1960s.
Dessert was something new: spumone cheesecake. The colors were identical with those of the ice cream at Brocato's, although the flavors were different. How could they not be, with the tangy flavor profile of cheesecake.
The Peppermill has taken a new marketing direction lately. Although their menu is about the same as always, they've run some specials that are such bargains it's difficult to ignore them. This appears to be working, because the dining room was busier than I've seen at dinner hours in a long time. (Breakfast and lunch have always been a-poppin'.)
The drive home was terrible, new power steering and spark plugs notwithstanding. Lightning leapt all over the sky, and rain dumped down here and there. The southbound Causeway bridge was closed, for some reason. I saw a police cruise scanning the railings, looking for something or someone.
Peppermill. Metairie: 3524 Severn Ave. 504-455-2266.
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