Friday, June 10, 2011.
Pollo Con No Molé. Nola Ice Cream.
The people who own the Bulldog restaurants and Lager's in Metairie premiered a new concept a week or so ago in Lakeview. It's called The Velvet Cactus, and it's generated a great deal of talk on the messageboard and radio show. In its first days, the streets nearby were clogged with parked cars and there was a wait for a table. Gosh, we must be bored. But at least we're not a bunch of hicks. They do this in New York, too.
I have no plan the go to the Velvet Cactus anytime soon. But the Marys have no such compunctions. They love new places. They also like Mexican food.
Reading over the menu, Mary Ann called me. "They have molé on the menu here," she said, knowing this would get my attention. Mole poblano--the kind made with bitter chocolate, sesame, and chile peppers, with another three dozen ingredients--is one of the two or three best sauces in the world. Only three restaurants in New Orleans serve it, though. The fact that the chains never do is evidence of how expensive and troublesome it is to make.
She asked whether I wanted her to bring home some of the chicken with molé. I hadn't eaten anything all day, so I went along with that plan.
She came home less enthusiastic about the Velvet Cactus than she had been on the phone. The Marys' dinner had not gone well. They sat outside, as is their wont. But their table was next to a garbage can, and was attracting flies on this hot day. (Another reason why I hate Al Fresco.) They asked to have the can moved, or to get a new table. But the server was herself new (another reason why I hate new restaurants), and took the strategy that if she just waited out this table of troublemakers, they'd go away.
On the other hand, the girls said they liked the food. MA made a meal out of her usual assortment of dips: guacamole, queso, bean, and salsa. ML added an order of brisket-topped nachos to the order. Although it was an appetizer, it was enough for four people, and that filled them up.
So they placed the order for my chicken with mole, explaining to the exasperated waitress that they wanted it to go. And away they went. But when Mary Ann opened the carton at home, she found that the waitress had got her goat one more time. No molé sauce! All we had was a half of a roasted chicken, more than a little overcooked. I took a taste and didn't want to go on. The sauce was the whole point of this exercise.
New dieting idea: get all worked up about a dish, but make sure it doesn't live up to its promise. Then you'll get disgusted and lose your appetite. I wound up eating little more than but a few snacks all day today.
In addition to the chicken con no molé, the Marys brought home three quarts of New Orleans Ice Cream, from a new local maker of that treat. Mary Ann had called me from the store to run down all the flavors: café au lait, Creole cream cheese, nectar, and about ten more. I asked her to pick any two. She picked three--one super-strong chocolate flavor for her and Mary Leigh, the bread pudding and cherries jubilee for me.
The cherries jubilee ice cream was very good. The white chocolate chunks in the bread pudding flavor were so solidified by the frozen temperature that they remained like stones in the mouth until long after the other elements in the ice cream were softened and swallowed. It tasted like vanilla ice cream with chunks.
The proofs have been coming in for the Lost Restaurants book. At first, I restrained my impulse to get involved in the typographic side of the project. But the old typesetter in me (I set type for a living for about twenty years in the 1970s and 1980s) would not let it pass. I wrote a two-page letter to the editor asking for some major changes in the design. I then rewrote it to remove the abrasiveness to which I can be given. And refrained from sending it until a couple of days from now, when I will think differently about the egregiousness of these shortcomings.
Velvet Cactus. Lakeview: 6300 Argonne Blvd. 504-301-2083.
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
