Friday, November 18, 2011.
Camellia Cafe.
If everything were normal today--and, I realize, few days have been this year--I would have walked five miles up the levee in front of Manresa, and stopped to gaze into the canefields for a half-hour or so. I would have eaten a couple of satsumas pulled from the tree an hour before. And I would feel as happy as I ever do, which is very happy indeed.
Instead, I am running as fast as I can to pull everything together so we can depart on the Thanksgiving trip to New York on Monday. And I'm not happy about that, at all.
I worked from six a.m. straight through the radio show. Mary Ann was as hungry as I. To the Camellia Café. It was busy, and without even a buffet going on.
Mary Ann saw a stuffed artichoke on the menu--one of her favorite dishes. It would prove to be the best dish of the evening, made with two small artichokes and a good, garlicky stuffing.
I couldn't remember having grilled oysters here before, so I tried them. They would have been very satisfying if I had never eaten the ones at Drago's, but since I have they came across as too polite. If flames don't lick all around the grilled oysters, they're not likely to be exciting.
I was in the mood for fried seafood. Mary Ann always is--even though she feels heavy dieter's remorse if she answers that call. (In saying this I am not, of course, insinuating that she is heavy, even though she thinks so.) The platter bore a shocking overload of food, all of it crisp and greaseless enough, although trying to distinguish among the various fried elements by flavor alone would have been tough.
The Camellia Café goes along with a current trend of letting you pick your side dishes, instead of automatically throwing fries and cole slaw at you. I asked for red beans. I went for the beans first, and found them cold. Not lukewarm, but refrigerator cold. Who could make a mistake like that? The cup they were in was cold on the outside. But they took care of it immediately.
Mary Ann didn't have a real entree, but did order an appetizer to fill the gap. It was a weird one called volcano shrimp: a stack of fried onion rings made to resemble the namesake mountain, with big grilled shrimp hanging on the sides of the caldera. A red hot sauce was splashed about the whole assemblage. This is not a dish for the ages, we both agreed.
This was an off-night for the Camellia Café. The blame lay at the feet of the customers, more of whom came in than we'd ever seen here before. The kitchen seemed to lag all night. Well, I'm glad they appear to be doing well. This is the kind of restaurant of which the North Shore has too few.
Camellia Cafe. Abita Springs: 69455 LA 59. 985-809-6313.
