Friday, February 5, 2010. Chef And The Fat Man. Mr. B's. I showed up this time for my interview for the "Chef And The Fat Man" radio show, recorded for airing in Atlanta who knows when. The two hosts (I had to ask which one was the Fat Man, although I have no room to talk about that) were seated in a corner of the Carousel Lounge of the Monteleone Hotel, which is hosting them. Chef Mike Monahan and Kevin Jenkins described their philosophy of picking venues for the program, which seem to involved freebies all around. They seem to be surprised when I told them that I pay for everything when I go out to eat. And that I rarely have chefs as guests on the show.
Well, they were really happy about being in New Orleans, excited about the Saints and Mardi Gras and eating around town. We spent a half-hour comparing notes. Fun enough.
They wrapped up at about quarter till two, just as Mary Ann was calling to ask where I was and how long it would take me to get to where she was. Which was Mr. B's, right across the street. I don't think her phone had disconnected when I pushed throuhg the revolving door. (Aha! A restaurant where you don't have to worry about how hard the cold winds blow this time of year!)
Mr. B's has been a favorite restaurant of mine as long as I've been going there. And the first time I went there was three days before it opened, in July 1979. But I almost never dine there. Too many other restaurants need my visits for me to go to favorites very often.
Started with gumbo ya-ya, naturally. Even though I had chicken-andouille gumbo just yesterday, this is the standard for that dish, and it's been too many months since my last sample of it. That one, I was distressed to note, was off--too thick. But today it was back to the perfection I remember from the early days, when chicken-andouille gumbo was making a big comeback after taking a back seat to seafood gumbo for a long time.
Mary Ann, returning to her diet, pursued the other revolutionary Mr. B's dish from its opening: hickory grilled redfish. It was the first restaurant to grill fish over burning wood, and only the second to grill fish over any kind of open fire. (Café Sbisa was the first, with its charcoal grill.)
On my plate was yet a third dish from those halcyon days, when Paul Prudhomme was on fire. It's a funny one, though: panneed veal with fettuccine Alfredo. Except for a few Italian places, that dish was almost unknown in restaurants of the late 1970s, as much as New Orleans people eat pannee meat at home. Commander's put it on the menu, and the next thing you knew all the Creole bistros had it. (If Marti Shambra were still alive, he'd be saying "We started serving that dish at Marti's before anybody else did!" He may have been right about that, but I'm not sure.)
Cindy Brennan, the managing partner of Mr. B's, cruised by. She said that the restaurant would be open on Super Bowl, but only because a lot of customers asked her to do so. "It sold out withing twenty-four hours!" she said. "So we're not really open. We are, but we aren't. You know."
When I picked up my car from my usual garage (the one on Iberville and Dauphine), I was surprised to have to pay $20. It was $12 only last week, after that four-hour lunch at Galatoire's. "Event pricing!" said the clerk. But the event is out of town! "The Quarter is already filling up," she said. I'll bet it is.
In fact, Mary Ann dropped a little bombshell at lunch. She has booked a suite at the Windsor Court, and will be inviting a bunch of friends to come over and watch the game there. What could I say? I'll be away on a cruise that night.
Mr. B’s Bistro. French Quarter: 201 Royal 504-523-2078. Contemporary Creole.
