Friday, May 14. Breakfast And A Fix. Pelican Club. First thing in the morning, I dropped my car off at the Goodyear store in Covington. They know me by name--not because of the radio show, but from twenty years of repairs and new tires on a half-dozen cars. Mary Ann picked me up and we went for breakfast to Mattina Bella. Scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, grits--as as good as they get.
Our server did something I haven't seen in years, something hard to explain because of the way it affects me. Some eight or nine years ago, when I ferried Jude and Mary Leigh to their South Shore schools most mornings, I had breakfast at the Hotel Inter-Continental's Veranda. That's a lush space, very pleasant to linger. Willy Coln was in his last years as chef there, and kept a great cold buffet, with many different smoked fish.
The waitress on one of these Veranda breakfasts came to the table in mid-meal, holding a pitcher of orange juice, asking whether I'd like more. "Yes, I would!" I said. She nodded and grinned widely at the same time, looking as if nothing I could have told her could have made her happier. Something about that two-second beaming face stuck in my memory, and made me feel good about the place. But she was never there again. I remember she told me she was from Alaska. Maybe she went back.
Anyway, I got the same face from our Bella Luna waitress when she came by with the coffee. I told Mary Ann about it, and why it made me happy. She nodded as if she were listening to the ravings of a mental defective. She probably had my story of last night's Prom Night Massacree on her mind.
I changed the subject. "I'll bet that tire costs $200," I said, expecting a reaction of amazement. She told me that a replaced tire on the Audi cost $300.
My new tire didn't cost $200. Only $194.61.
No wonder they remember me by name.
We had dinner tonight with Gary and Julie Diecidue. Their daughter Carly and Mary Leigh are close school chums, and the Diecidues throughout the year were hospitable to Mary Leigh far beyond what one could expect. Our daughter spent the night at their house almost every weekend. Not only was that convenient and fun for ML and Carly, but it kept her from having to cross the lake at the end of a night of socializing.
Taking the Diecidues out to dinner was long overdue. Getting the date was the hard part. We're all too busy. (I read somewhere that Americans are working 200 hours a year more than they did in the 1970s, which amounts to a month-long reverse vacation.)
But here we were finally at the Pelican Club. It was a warm evening, and Exchange Alley was jumping. The Green Goddess--Chef Chris DeBarr's loose dispensary of his unique food--had all its sidewalk tables full, and Chris was visiting tables out there. It's just across the alley from the Pelican Club's front door, inside of which is the bar, the piano, and the best tables in the house, if you ask me. Mary Ann arrived first and got the one in the corner. Sanford Hinderlie, a music professor at Loyola, composer, and very classy jazz stylist, played in the opposite corner. My idea of the perfect setting for dinner.
And here were the Diecidues. We launched quickly into Topic A: how wonderful our daughters are, and what good fortune that they should both be going to Tulane next year. Then the oil spill, about which the only sure thing is that nobody really knows anything for sure.
Then food. It was the kind of food that reconfirms my five-star rating of the Pelican Club every time I go there. It's not particularly adventuresome--this is New Orleans food, most of it familiar. You never encounter even an ingredient that makes you pull out a glossary to see what it is. But the excellence of the ingredients and the lusty excitement of the eating grab you. You simply could not ask for bigger, better shrimp, crabmeat lumps, sea scallops, chunks of lobster, or fish fillets. With that kind of quality, you don't want a lot of games played around the edges and underneath.
Everything we had was so beautiful that I will cover it in gallery form:
Barbecue shrimp with an Asian-flavored, very peppery sauce, served over noodles. The noodles were as good as the shrimp. An interesting vogue turned up, not for the last time: serving dishes covered with burned-on crust. I am of two minds about this presentation, which suggests that the dish was roasted in a very hot oven that made the sauces splatter.
Sea scallops and artichokes with garlic butter. This is a signature appetizer since the restaurant opened twenty years ago, and uses the best scallops to delicious effect.
Oysters baked with bacon, roasted peppers, parmesan cheese and garlic butter. This seems to change a little bit every time I have them, but I like them anyway.
Seafood martini. It's a glassful of crabmeat, shrimp, and lobster, napped with an herbal ravigote sauce. I don't know how anyone could not love this.
Crabmeat and crawfish cakes, topped with a boiled shrimp and remoulade sauce with a fried green tomato in the middle. Lot of flavor, texture, and temperature contrasts going on here.
Escargots with puff pastry hats. It's the classic snails in garlic butter, with little pastries on top.
I asked for an adaptation of one of the night's specials, which as given used Chilean sea bass--a fish I don't like. They were pleased to do it with drum instead. It rested atop some wild mushroom ravioli in a red sauce. Most of the time, red sauce and seafood don't go together. But when it does, it works terrifically, as it did here.
Here's the trout with crabmeat Mary Ann gets wherever she finds it.
A filet mignon with bearnaise.
A ribeye with truffled mashed potatoes, glazed with orange-chilpotle barbecue sauce.
Coconut and chocolate pie. Like a Mounds, in pie form.
Pecan pie. I was too full to taste it.
We went through just one bottle of Trefethen Chardonnay--two scant drinkers were at the table. I haven't had this wine in awhile. Still that old-style Napa richness, there.
A nice evening with people we already knew were nice. They were another of the many for whom Katrina brought a life enhancement. They're house, deep in a flood zone, had to be torn down and rebuilt. Nice house. Mary Leigh sure likes sleeping there.
Pelican Club. French Quarter: 615 Bienville. 504-523-1504. Contemporary Creole.
