Friday, July 6, 2012.
Stuck With The Check. Redemption, With Last Week's People.
While digging around in the back seat of my car I found something surprising: the American Express folder with the check for the dinner last night at Orleans Grapevine. The whole thing, with the merchant's signed and tipped copy. How did that get in here? Would the management think I skipped out on the check?
What a sneaky way to do that, if one were so inclined. It probably wouldn't work. The amount of the dinner--but without the tip--had indeed shown up on PayPal. I'd prefer that it had been the other way around. I do all I can to keep from alienating waiters, who as a group contribute more to the pleasure of my life than anyone outside my immediate family.
After the radio show, I dropped off the folder and my apologies. Since Orleans Grapevine is in the center of the French Quarter, I got a look at what's going on there on this Essence Festival weekend. A lot of people were on Bourbon Street, even after a heavy thunderstorm came through downtown in the previous few hours.
The Essence Festival is primarily about music and a schedule of self-development seminars. I frankly don't know whether there's a food aspect to it. If so, they're not getting the word out to people like me. Or people like me are not investigating assiduously enough.
A long time ago (1980s?), during one of the early iterations of the Essence Festival, I had dinner at Mr. B's with one of the magazine's primary editors. She was a sharp, well groomed young African-American woman. (She was what Essence is largely about.) Arranging the dinner and joining us was an openly gay, white public relations person who was working with the magazine. For some reason, the lady thought that I was gay, too. (She wasn't the first person to assume this. I have never understood why I give that impression.) When something I said persuaded her otherwise, she became a little flirty--or so said the p.r. guy. (I have no radar for this, as all the women I've known will attest.) Besides, it was one of the rare times in my single years when I was going steady with someone. But every time I hear about the Essence Festival, I think of that dinner.
My two options for dinner were a block from one another. Canal Street Bistro again, to work up a review. Or Redemption. Mary Ann called just as I turned the corner. She told me to go to Redemption. I did.
In the center of the dining room were Errol and Peggy Laborde. Who were at the Canal Street Bistro when I was there exactly a week ago. They joined me at my table there, so I figured they owed me an invitation, even though it was half past their appetizer.
The conversation slipped back to the Times-Picayune's planned cutback of daily publication. Errol is still writing about this in his online column for New Orleans Magazine. I think it's five weeks running now. I wanted to tell him to get off it, nothing anyone will do will make a difference. Even if the paper changes its mind, the newspaper as we know it is approaching the same museum where are kept the memories of radio drama, steam locomotives, hot-metal typography, electric buses, and turkey poulette, there to be locked in forever and only visited for the purposes of reliving the past.
I wanted to tel him all that. But I didn't.
Chef Greg Picolo emerged to advise. The escargots and portobello mushroom appetizer were it, he said. And the duck. I was thinking about the steak with the demi-glace and oysters, a redeemed dish from when this old church was Christian's, but the waiter seconded the duck.
The escargots was a very good dish, and different--although the matching of snails and mushrooms is by now a classic. The duck was tender, almost to softness. Next to it was a pile of what they call "dirty risotto," the rice tossed with a wet sauce including duck liver and foie gras. The sauce running over from the duck mixed nicely with this, with a lot of flavors playing around with one another.
I noticed something bothersome with both of these dishes--and the two Errol and Peggy let me sample. It happened when we did the Eat Club over here some months ago, too. The food here is not landing at the table hot enough. At least not for me.
The dinner ended on a perfect note, though. Cheesecake with pistachios: wonderful.
Redemption. Mid-City: 3835 Iberville St. 504-309-3570.
