Friday, January 30, 2009.
Commander's Palace.
I had the loveliest half-hour nap before setting out for the South Shore this afternoon. I take a short nap every day, to break up the writing portion of my day from the radio work. Some are better than others. I'd be a sleep-and-dreams critic if anybody gave a damn about it. What more self-absorbed topic could there be? I've also considered writing about self-absorption, which at least I can observe in others. I consider myself an expert at it.
I really, really wanted to go to either Antoine's or Arnaud's for dinner tonight. But I had three commercials to write and record, and by the time I was finished with those, it was after eight o'clock. Too late to start a big deal in the French Quarter, unless I lived there. (Someday, I will have to get a pied-a-terre in the city, but that will be a very hard sell with Mary Ann.)
With no goal in mind, I headed up St. Charles Avenue. I thought of something before I got far. Could I squeeze in at Commander's Palace? I tried; I could. I was surprised that I was able to get past the greeter's desk without being recognized. He told me I had to wait a half-hour. I could stand that. I headed to the bar for a Sazerac, but didn't get far. A number of waiters spotted me, and the next thing I knew I was sampling a very curious appetizer from the hand of Chef Tory McPhail. "It's foie gras café au lait," he said, passing over what looked mike a miniature hurricane glass. "We whip up the foie gras with cream and it winds up tasting like chocolate or coffee," he said. It did. Next to the glass were two little beignets and a generous slab of Number One foie gras, hot off the grill. It was gone to someone's table right after the foie gras au lait I drank was replaced.
The Sazerac was generous. A young couple from somewhere wanted to know what it was. I tried to explain, but I don't think either of them knew what Herbsaint was. Or rye whiskey, for that matter. I gave the woman a taste. I don't think she liked it. But that's about right. Nobody should like a Sazerac the first time they taste it.
I was seated at one of only two or three deuce tables in all of Commander's Palace, telling me that I was still flying under the radar of some departments. No matter. Why waste a good table on a loner who looks like me? I'd hide me too if I had a restaurant. Besides, I didn't need any better than this, and a light was shining right down on the table so I could take my photos.
A young but outgoing waitress took my table and started asking questions. She did know me; in fact, she said, she listened to the radio show a lot. I liked that she was full of both knowledge and opinions regarding the menu that night. For example, she made no bones about her feeling that the redfish encrusted with bone marrow (!) was a better dish than the pompano, even after I expressed my love of pompano. I'm glad she did. I would have missed a great dish otherwise.
That's not where it started, though. Tory thought I needed a full order of "Foie Gras du Monde," as he called it--the stuff I had a sip of in the kitchen. The mini-beignets had unexpected features. Peaches, for example. The foie gras café au lait once again was a weird masquerade: it tasted like foie gras, but also like coffee with milk. Very entertaining. And then there was the foie gras itself. There is foie gras and then there is foie gras. Commander's has a long-time standard for this delicious stuff well above those used by most restaurants. As I savored it this time, it came to me that I've eaten more foie gras in this restaurant than in all other restaurants combined. That's because they started offering it so early in the craze (in the early 1980s), and because even when I don't order it the chef feels he has to send me some. Who could complain?
I was allowed to take command of the rest of my dinner. The first thing that caught my eye was the oyster and absinthe soup under a dome. This is an old, old recipe that the Brennans have served since their earliest days in the restaurant business. The last time I saw it (but without the absinthe) was in the mid-1980s, when it became a popular specialty for a year or so. It's being revived now because absinthe is once again available. It wasn't a soup, really (and it wasn't listed as such on the menu), but a wet stew of oysters, artichokes, and bacon under a square of puff pastry. And there was nothing missing from that ensemble.
Then came a tapas-size order of the redfish. Marrow-encrusted? That's innovative. In color and appearance, not a grabber. But the flavor--yes. I tried to think of something to compare it with. Fish wrapped with bacon? Almost, not quite. A little fennel in there, and "charred parsley." Good, whatever. Line caught redfish! Not farm raised! (It's still legal in Mississippi.)
The chef made another interposition: he thought I had to have some of the veal tenderloin, injected with bacon fat. This is an interesting, old, but neglected idea: taking some naturally lean meat and inserting natural fat into it. I keep thinking of trying it with steaks. I'd render beef fat from, say, a brisket, and use a hypodermic needle to squirt it inside a not-so-prime sirloin strip. It could be fabulous, but with nothing artificial or out of place, really. Anyway, this veal was rich, and the barley served as a side was good, too.
But all of this faded behind the sheer excellence of the lamb chops Commander's buys from Colorado. Not only great, but great every time. Simple presentation: a walk across the hickory grill, natural jus. Fabulous. 
This parade was accompanied by a second line of half-glasses of oddball wines from the sommelier, who swore that I was helping him try out some new but intriguing bottles. I've heard that before, but it's hard to say no. And Lally Brennan, who runs the place with her cousin Ti Martin, wanted to sample a half-glass of this and that too.
Lally sat down for awhile to catch up. She seemed to me to be unduly concerned with the state of the economy. I hope I will be proved right when I told her that New Orleans will get through it without any noticeable privations, but as usual nobody would make a lot of money. And that when the national economy picks up, we'll head into a slump.
Tory came by for a few minutes, too. I told him that if a similar dinner had been served in any equally accomplished restaurant anywhere else in America, it would not have tasted as good. He and Lally went quiet, so I told them why I thought that. It's that distinct glow of the Creole flavor in everything. Not hot and spicy anything, exactly, but a pleasing warmth. They seemed to like that.
A couple of bites of a molten chocolate cake with streams of fruity sauces was enough for me. My chocolate-addled wife and daughter would have loved this, but it's a bit much for my palate, which overloads and blows a circuit for intensity like this.
I guess all this amounted to a re-jiggered version of "The Chef's Playground," the perfectly-named chef's tasting menu. It was a steal at $85, I thought--since those lamb chops go for $42 a la carte. But they won't let me have other than a sweetheart deal.
That said, I can't help but think that anyone else with savvy could come here for dinner and depart with any idea other than that Commander's Palace is back where it was fifteen and twenty years ago, when it was unarguably the leader of New Orleans restaurant cooking trends.
Commander’s Palace. Garden District: 1403 Washington Ave.. 504-899-8221. Contemporary Creole.
