Friday, October 15. Thirty Years. Fat Greg. The kind of fall weather felt in places far north of here is back again. It was forty-three this morning. I had to plug in the little heater in my office to get my fingers nimble enough to type.
I needed all my mental nimbleness, too. I had a special piece to write. In a couple of weeks, New Orleans CityBusiness will mark thirty years of publication. The newspaper hosts my weekly restaurant reviews. My first column for them was in the first issue. Except for a year's sabbatical I took in the late 1980s, the newspaper has published my columns in almost every issue since. Even Katrina shut the column down for only two weeks.
Editor Greg Larose suggested that I make the piece a comparison between the way things were then and the way they are now. I've already covered the most pervasive change, back in the twenty-fifth anniversary issue. That was about how the gourmet bistros of the mid-1980s changed the gourmet dining landscape. So this time I'll note the second-biggest upheaval. That would be the growth in the number of ethnic restaurants, particularly since the hurricane.
As it turned out, this article was easy to write. Maybe too easy. Maybe it's too obvious. So I added the third biggest change: the near-complete death of formal dining, and its continuing decline in popularity. I hate to point that out, but it's a fact.
Mary Leigh came home to the Cool Water Ranch after her last class, and the Marys went to one of their favorite places. That left me alone for dinner on the South Shore. I am remiss in my coverage of the Kenner restaurant scene, so I headed that way, with no particular place in mind. Kenner has a lot of new restaurants. Most are at the low end in terms of price, environment, and ambitiousness. Indeed, the biggest restaurant news from Kenner in the past year was the closing of Le Parvenu a few months ago. That was Kenner's best place to dine.
A few blocks off the Interstate exit, I saw a place that's been mentioned favorably by listeners. It has a memorable name, if not a very appealing one: Fat Greg's. Those who feel more comfortable with a certain grittiness in their local restaurants (and there are plenty such people) will find it here. The parking lot needs a resurfacing. The sign on the marquee is hand-painted, and not well.
On the other hand, the dining room was pleasant enough, and so was the lady who greeted me as we passed each other in the dining room. The menu showed the standard collection of neighborhood-style Italian eats, at prices that raised my antennae. Too cheap. Almost every entree was $12.99. For some (perhaps most), this would work as a positive force, making all the food taste better. I am not one of those people. I am in the thrall of reality. I know that it's not possible to put out the best quality at the lowest price, no matter how much we want to believe that it is.
A letterboard sign outside claimed that Fat Greg's makes the best pizza in town. I can't resist a challenge like that. The cheese pizza was reasonably good, but was overloaded for my tastes. I ate two slices and took the rest home.
The entree intrigued me: cannelloni stuffed with Italian sausage. That really is something that could be sold at a profit for thirteen dollars, even if made with excellent ingredients. The waitress confirmed that it was indeed very good, and recommended that I get it with both the Alfredo and red sauces. I was about to ask for that, so I figured we were on the same wavelength.
I still think Italian sausage cannelloni is a good idea. Just not the way they do it here. The sausage, cut in half lengthwise, was still in its casing and ran through most of the two pasta tubes, like a hot dog in a bun. I had in mind that the sausage would be broken up into morsels, perhaps mixed with red sauce and Parmesan or mozzarella cheese, then wrapped up in thin pasta sheets. The way it came out was way too heavy, with overly thick pasta, too much of a too rich white sauce, and too much cheese all around. Cheese is good, but one reaches a point where more cheese is not better than less cheese. We were far past that point.
Then Fat Greg--who wasn't, really, all that rotund--came out to tell me that I had been found out, that he listened to the radio show, and was honored that I came in. He told me that the restaurant is a mom-and-pop operation, in the literal sense. The waitress is his wife.
I'm glad that there are people who love this style of cooking. I'm glad he didn't ask me to detail my thoughts about it. It's not bad, really. But. . .
Fat Greg's. Kenner: 3232 Williams Blvd. 504-305-4611.
