Friday, October 14, 2011.
Clipped. Green Goddess At Last.
I thought I was far enough ahead of my labors that I'd be able to finish the newsletter early, get a haircut, then lunch at the Rib Room for the first time since Rene Bajeux took over. But no such luck. The newsletter piece for this department took much longer to write than usual. It was about the chef's tasting dinner at the Windsor Court last weekend. Lots of photos to pull together.
The haircut was the more pressing of my two appointments at the Royal Orleans Hotel. Harold Klein, my long-time barber, showed off a newly-acquired antique barber chair. It's even older than those white-enamel jobs I remember from my single-digit years. It's made mostly of wood--beautifully carved wood, at that. He says he also bought another one almost as old, and he's having it restored. Collecting antique barber's chairs is a good hobby for a barber. My equivalent is the 13,000 hours of old radio dramas and comedies I'll probably never get around to listening to.
No time for any kind of lunch. That weakened my resolve not to eat any of Don Debuc's damned doughnuts, several dozen of which he leaves in the kitchen at the radio station every Friday. I ate half of a lemon-filled one. It's not only complete garbage, but it goobers up my vocal cords, making it hard to talk in the mellifluous tones I like to think I give forth during the radio show. This is the power doughnuts have over me.
My guilt about what this is doing to my net weight inspired me to think of a dinner venue I have thus far failed to remember: the Green Goddess.
The Green Goddess is two restaurants in one. In the daytime, it's a vegetarian café. In the evening, it's the home kitchen of Chef Chris DeBarr. Chris is a very good chef whose career has included a number of irregular, offbeat restaurants. Before the Green Goddess he cheffed Delachaise, whose wine bar menu allowed Chris largely to ignore the standard menu structure and just do what he thought would be cool. His customers--also cool--appreciated this. But the mainstream didn't know him or his works very well.
Some of Chris's fans have accused me of intentionally ignoring what he's doing at Green Goddess. They cite a battle of words almost ten years ago between me and Chris's wife, the novelist Poppy Z. Brite. Whose work I have enjoyed. Even our arguments on the web messageboard were mild compared with others I've had there. I was always cordial to here, and once had her as my guest at an Eat Club dinner we had at Bayona, only because she said she didn't like the place.
It's true that I have taken too long to get to the Green Goddess. But it can also be said about many other restaurants. We have far too many in our town for one person to review them all.
Well, here I was at last. Most of the Green Goddess's tables are on the flagstone walkway that is Exchange Alley, on the other (lake) side of the passage from the Pelican Club. I was ready to sit outside, but when I checked in with the hostess she said that since I was dining alone I would have to do so inside. There were tables available outside, but they were expecting a big night. Indeed, when I left two hours later, all the tables out there were full.
The inside seating tonight appeared to add up to three stools at the bar. (They usually have a handful of small tables in there too, but I didn't see them.) This got me a lot of attention from the bartender, who except for a break in the middle of the meal was also my waiter.
The bar shares the small space with the kitchen. Eating in the kitchen here is not like eating at a chef's table. The noise and the language common to all kitchens was full volume and unedited. The banging of plates and the sound of wine bottles being dropped into a container of other empty wine bottles were not softened for the benefit of the customer (or customers, after a single lady was brought in halfway through my dinner).
I began with a good cocktail called a Guillotine, which eased my mind while I read through the verbose but interesting, lengthy menu. The vegetarian aspect of lunch continues on--though not exclusively--at dinner. The soup of curried pumpkin and yogurt sounded good to me and was. Interesting flavor, rustic style, a little too thick but otherwise entirely enjoyable.
The bartender had some interesting wines to sell and I had a glass of white from South America. The entree it worked with was named for the famous local writer from the 1800s, Lafcadio Hearn. It was a healthy cut of black drum, seared a point, and both marinated and sauced with what the menu called "sake kazu" sauce. Under the fish was a drift of a unique kind of rice I wish I had asked about. It had the football-like shape of Arborio, but it was smaller and firmer. Along the back side of the plate, a thoroughly eccentric collection of greens--some Asian, some not.
All this added up to a dish so well conceived and executed that it would be at home in the most ambitious, expensive restaurant--except, perhaps, for the presentation, and even that had plenty enough attention given to it. Superb. Creative. Fresh. Terrific contrast of textures. Can hardly wait to have it again.
The next course was mentioned as a final, instead-of-dessert course on the $55 chef's tasting menu. It was a quartet of what looked like round ravioli with poached eggs on top of each one . In fact, it was slices of golden beets, cooked to softness, topped with truffled chevre cheese and broiled until it glazed a bit on the top. A sauce made of pomegranate and molasses formed a sort of soup at the bottom, its sweetness giving the desired dessert effect. Once again, it's easy to imagine this being served at August, Stella!, or anywhere else at the upper reaches of the gourmet pantheon.
I followed that with the cheese plate. The bartender (who had now returned from wherever he had gone) strongly urged the cheese plate on me when I asked about it. The cheeses included nothing really far out, but the names were all new to me. They were served very generously (a table of four could have split it easily), at the right cool room temperature. Again, the place had reached the top three or four percent among servers of cheese hereabouts.
In the waning moments of my visit, the music was starting to get under my skin, and each new dropping of a pile of dirty dishes into the dishwasher pan made me jerk a little higher than the time before. The check, with tip, was $114--quite a bit more than I thought I'd spend here, but not unreasonable considering what had come to this table.
If Chris had been on duty (I didn't see him, but he knows what I look like and is friendly), I would have told him to get his brilliant food out of here and into a comfortable venue, where he could become famous. But that's the sexagenarian talking. The crowd on the alley--most of them half my age or less--seemed to love the tremendous informality. Times keep changing.
I can't wait to see what Chris's fans say about this on the boards. Let me guess. . . "He knew Chris wasn't there and he went that night on purpose!" "He's trying to start a rumor that it costs over $100 a person to eat at Green Goddess!" "He doesn't have any friends, so it's his fault he had to eat in the kitchen!"
Have fun, boys and girls!
Green Goddess. French Quarter: 307 Exchange Alley. 504-301-3347.
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.
