Friday, March 22, 2013.
Tujague's. Getting Confused On The Gulf Coast. BR's Prime Steakhouse.
A disturbing trend is affecting some of our oldest and most delicate restaurants. Big money is taking them over from family owners. The most discussed example of this is John Georges's absorption of Galatoire's, which continues to move from its cherished past into a much more aggressive future. The building they bought next door is there to expand the restaurant's catering capabilities on the upper floors. The lower floor--originally talked about as a top-end steakhouse--has become a bar with live music. We have our fingers crossed that the place will remain classy and feature serious musicians playing mostly jazz, of which there is less and less on Bourbon Street all the time.
A few weeks ago we heard that Chef Gunter Preuss, who has operated Broussard's for the last thirty of its ninety-three years--has sold the restaurant to a local group with a number of reasonably good but mostly touristy French Quarter restaurants. Nothing has happened to change Broussard's yet, but if there were a way to place legal bets on that I would.
Rumbling below the surface at Brennan's is trouble involving the real estate. I get different reports on what's going on from an assortment of sources that should be authoritative. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how it will turn out. There are some very aggressive forces at work, most of them not primarily concerned with how their plans will affect Brennan's customers.
Now Tujague's finds itself in a similar state. Steve Latter passed away recently after operating the restaurant for three decades. Steven came into the business (he had not before been a restaurateur) after his brother Stanford bought the building in 1982. Now, however, Stanford is talking about selling, and the word is that the most interested buyer is a guy who sells tourist-related merchandise. That may leave Tujague's without a home. Nothing official has been announced, but the possibility looms of Tujague's having to move or, worse, to close.
That prospect has New Orleanians all worked up, including many who haven't dined in Tujague's in many years or ever. I get a lot of calls on the radio from concerned people who then ask what kind of restaurant Tujague's is. It must also be noted that there's no reason Tujague's couldn't move. Indeed, it wouldn't be the first time. It moved a hundred years ago, when it was merely fifty years old. The old Café Sbisa location would work.
The latest player in this game is John Besh. Somebody asked him whether he'd be interested in taking over Tujague's, and he said he would. Yeah, sure. So would I. What about one of the Brennan's? Maybe the Times-Picayune could buy it, and open it three days a week.
At the moment Steven Latter's son Mark is managing Tujague's, which is operating normally. Mark has been working with his late father for some time. He recently extended lunch hours from Saturdays and Sundays only to Fridays, and added a two-bit martini. Sounds like he's looking toward the future. On the other hand, what do you do if your building is ripped out from under you?
I had no radio show today because of some hoops tournament. Mary Ann suggested that we drive to the Gulf Coast and scout around the restaurants there. I am asked about them all the time, but we rarely have the time to go. And now that Vrazel's is gone (Bill Vrazel retired), I don't know what to say.
A few callers recommended the other restaurant in the Island View complex--the one that Emeril's Fish House operated for awhile, badly. Carter Green's is the name. Or is it CG's? We're not sure. It took over the handsome space Emeril had built. A look around was discouraging, though. It looked like an average steak place, even though the major cuts are Prime. Mary Ann didn't like the look of the staff or the clientele. I'll have to check this one on my own, I can hear her saying.
Anyway, the reservation we'd made was not at CG's Steak House but at LB's Steak House (the initials business had us confused). But that's in the Grand Hotel in Biloxi. (The Island View used to be another Grand.) Twenty minutes up the coast, we were fifteen minutes late, and hoped our table was still there. It was. A cramped booth in a second-rate dining room. Mary Ann liked this place even less than she did CG's.
Now what? Well, find another steakhouse with initials instead of a name, of course. That would be BR Prime Steakhouse, in the Beau Rivage. BR's is in the space that has been the top-end restaurant of the Beau Rivage since it opened, but under many names and concepts. The original was off the charts in its food and environment, with enormous aquariums full of very exotic sea life in each wall.
Katrina forced the Beau Rivage to rebuild this restaurant completely, and it looks nothing like it once did. Much more masculine and traditional, with some distinctive Las Vegas touches but excellent taste. Mary Ann loved the environment.
But we had a problem. The restaurant was booked up until nine, and it wasn't quite seven. I suggested we dine at the Italian restaurant next door. But Mary Ann--the Empress Of No Reservations and the Queen Of Standby--told them to put our name on the waiting list, and that we'd be in the bar. Works for me. A martini is the perfect preamble to a steak dinner. We also got an order of the truffled fries. We had not quit dispatched all of those when the hostess--the same one who had told us ten minutes before that a table tonight would be impossible without a two-hour wait--said she had a table for us. It was just off the bar, not in the main room. But it was an oversize deuce next to one of the towering glass wine rooms. This, said a joyful Mary Ann, was the best table in the house.
A couple of amuse-bouches and a talk with the sommelier later (he had a terrific Napa Cabernet called Worthy for $79), we were enjoying ourselves immensely. I began the dinner with a very well-made bowl of turtle soup, strongly recommended by the waiter over the bolognese pasta that intrigued me. Mary Ann got crab cakes, after we ascertained that it was indeed local blue crabmeat--a product that is in short supply right now.
I was excited by the night's special: a sixteen-ounce, bone-in, dry-aged, USDA Prime sirloin strip. That is my favorite steak of them all. It's basically a porterhouse without the filet, which I always pass off to MA anyway.
The eating was all I'd hoped for, except for one niggling question. It is the nature of a strip sirloin to taste better at one end than the other. I have never been able to figure which is the good side. I'm about ready to declare that it varies from steak to steak. But when I get one of these, I keep rotating it, looking for the differences. The funny thing was that I did not encounter the bone in this bone-in special steak. After I ate the last bite, there was nothing on the plate. I eat shrimp shells, but not beef bones. There must have been a mixup at the expediter's station, and some other lucky guy was eating my steak.
I let it go because a) the steak had been very good; 2) Mary Ann was in such a happy mood that I didn't want to introduce a problem to our table, including that trick of mine of pretending to go to the bathroom but really looking for the manager; and iii) the check was about at the amount I had figured for this dinner, $300.
But. . . Mary Ann had only crab cakes and a side of brussels sprouts, period. She said, "This better not have cost us $200." So I secreted the receipt away and moved to more pleasant matters. I'm glad I did, because the reality would have ruined the evening for her. Not only had we been charged $18 too much for the swapped-out steak, but the bill showed two bottles of $79 wine. I know we only had one, because the sommelier decanted it, and we discussed that. We never quite emptied the decanter. (Mary Ann, not a wine buff, drinks a half-glass of wine on a good night.)
I didn't notice this until I got home. I am sure that it was an honest mistake, one that would have been corrected immediately had I mentioned it. Both the waiter and the sommelier were handling the wine, and what probably happened was that both of them keyed it in. Shame on me for not checking while we were still there, as I have advised people to do for decades.
I wrote an email to the customer service address at the casino. I have no doubt that they will make it good.
BR Prime Steakhouse. Biloxi: Beau Rivage Casino, 875 Beach Blvd. 228-386-7111.
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