Friday, June 22, 2012.
Blue Jays At Arnaud's.
My most effective means of giving to non-profits is to allow them to auction my services as the hose of a dinner in a nice restaurant. What I have to pay is multiplied many times, and two people wind up giving instead of just one.
The only problem with this scheme is that it's harder to arrange a date for these dinners than one could imagine. The one I hosted tonight was purchased at the Jesuit High School Celebration over a year ago. Getting six people together for an event that can take place at any random time is like working a Rubik's cube.
I realized as I wrote those words how long it's been since the Rubik craze (and that's what it was) peaked: the early 1980s. That means a certain number of readers never have heard of it, even though over 350 million of them have been sold.
The buyer of my dinner had a relatively easy job of pulling the other guests together--literally. All except one are relatives--wife, sons, daughter. The exception is a physical therapist, who works with the patriarch, who is an orthopedic surgeon. He was there because one of the doctor's daughters couldn't make it.
The two sons are both Jesuit grads--one of them a valedictorian. I started in on the Alma Mater, and he picked right up on it. Everybody can remember the fight song, but only the true blue can remember the Alma Mater.
The restaurant was Arnaud's, my favorite place to stage these dinners. The restaurant's traditional formality is unflappable, even as it turns a blind eye to the people who come in underdressed. Their waiters and captains are dressed to the nines, and even the bus personnel have snappy uniforms.
In its specialties, Arnaud's is hard to beat. The combination of five kinds of baked oysters has no equal. All five are consistently fine all the time, and stand with the three or four best specialists in such things. I touted it well enough that five of the seven people at the table ordered it. I guess I didn't say enough about the shrimp Arnaud--the best remoulade anywhere. I didn't see any of it. I did move a smoked pompano and a turtle soup, two other great specialties here.
Salads next. One of these days I will say the right words to make the original house salad return. It was installed here when Archie Casbarian took over Arnaud's back in 1979, and was there for years, with a marvelous emulsified, mild vinaigrette like no other. But nobody seems to know what I'm talking about.
Sheepshead stood in for trout tonight. That's an improvement, if you ask me. Sheepshead is the most underrated of Gulf fish. Fish with crabmeat, meuniere and amandine got a lot of play, as well they should have. Somebody got the three-way veal dish with Kit Wohl's name attached.
My dish was a personal favorite, although I don't remember Arnaud's version. Chicken Pontalba was created at Brennan's a long time ago, but the Brennans have allowed it to go nearly extinct. It's a half-chicken covered with cubed potatoes, mushrooms, ham, and bearnaise sauce. Or it should be a half. Restaurants throughout the world, responding to the fussiness of their customers, are eschewing chicken dishes with bones. Arnaud's too, to the detriment of the dish. Fried chicken aside, I think I could count all the bone-in chicken dishes served in local restaurants on the toes of two feet (if I may be allowed to remove my socks to avoid using a cliche).
We had a bunch of desserts, including bananas Foster, the bread pudding with my name on it, and café brulot. The company was delightful and the dinner went on for three hours.
Arnaud's. French Quarter: 813 Bienville. 504-523-5433.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
