Friday, January 7, 2011. Football At Antoine's. They're getting ready to mess traffic up at the south end of the Causeway. The Army Corps of Engineers is building up the levee and adding a much higher floodwall. This will require a new overpass, which will take two years to complete. In the meantime, traffic will be funneled into two lanes (this week and next, just one) instead of the usual four. The traffic engineers say this will cause a major backup, but I'll bet it doesn't. Whatever those guys say is almost always wrong.
I am not doing well with my resolutions. I certainly haven't cut back on my eating. And my intention to resume the serial fiction "Back To The Wall" in the newsletter has been foiled by my decision to sum up the state of the New Orleans restaurant business in ten top-ten lists. As it turned out, most of those lists went on to twelve or even eighteen entries. Making up the lists is not as easy as it seems. Not even to me, and I should know better. Well, they're all done now. Maybe I'll get on the soap opera next week.
I thought I'd take a chance at finding Harold Klein at his barbershop in the Royal Orleans Hotel after the radio show. I know that some nights he does work late. No such luck tonight. But I had an ulterior motive for coming here anyway. Christmas season ended yesterday, and I've not been to Antoine's. What was becoming an annual tradition of having dinner with my sisters there after Christmas could not be jammed into the schedule this year.
Walking through the lobby of the Royal O, I ran into Mark Uddo, who was having drinks with his wife, his sister and a friend. Mark and his chef brother Mike were the owners of the terrific G&E Courtyard Grill in the 1990s. Mark has been in the catering business for years, and does all the food for Country Day School. His wife Connie and my Mary Ann are good friends.
"We wanted to go to the Hermes Bar, but it was too full,"
Mark said when I mentioned where I was headed. (The Hermes Bar is the new watering hole at Antoine's.)
The restaurant was busy, with about half the front room filled and most of the big Annex. Several private parties were going on here and there. This is encouraging: the weeks after the holidays are usually pretty slow. Andy Crocchiolo, the maitre d', told me that in the weeks surrounding Christmas there were several days when over a thousand people had lunch here. I'm glad I wasn't there for that.
"Antoine's Annex has been doing really well, too," Andy said. "They just put in a new coffee system that lets them make every cup fresh, one at a time. They're baking a lot of new things. The quiches are really popular." I expressed surprise at this. The times I stuck my head onto Antoine's Annex--a little ice cream and coffee shop on the Royal Street perimeter of the restaurant's sprawling property--there wasn't much going on. "No, really--everything these people have done in the last few years worked," Andy said. "Did you look in the bar?"
As if on cue, a raucous, whooping cheer rolled down the hallway, past the Mystery Room and the Dungeon and into the dining room. The Cotton Bowl, starring LSU, was being displayed on the televisions in the Hermes Bar. (The screens are hidden behind what look like big, gilded-frame antique mirrors most of the time.)
My regular waiter Charles Carter was busy with a private party, but he passed by long enough to let me know that the pompano was fresh and big. "Have you ever tried it fried?" he asked. No, I said, and doubted this was a good idea. "You ought to, with brown butter," he said. "I'll get them to give you half grilled, half fried, and see what you think." The grilled (top in the photo above) was better, I thought, although it's hard to argue with a double portion of my favorite fish.
By that time I was past the soufflee potatoes and Sazerac course, and into the oysters 2-2-2. The Rockefellers ware just right, the Bienvilles were even better, and the "Thermidors" (hot cocktail sauce and bacon) were their usual cheap thrill. All Louisiana oysters. I could have determined this without asking: they were on the small side, which is how Louisiana oysters will be for the next year. But the authorities were saying we wouldn't have them at all right now.
Finished the meal with coffee and peche Melba. The cheering from the bar only got louder as the evening wore on. I wonder what Roy Alciatore would think of what Antoine's has become. He ran the restaurant from the 1930s into the 1970s, and set a standard of changelessness and serenity. Perfect for those times, when people liked ceremony and formality in their upscale restaurants. Wouldn't fly these days, and didn't in the years (or even the decade) right before before the storm. The new, looser Antoine's is the result, and it is saving the restaurant from a fate I don't want to think about.
Antoine's. French Quarter: 713 St Louis. 504-581-4422.
