Mattina Bella. A Discovery: Opal Basil.

[title type="h5"]Saturday, January 3, 2015. Breakfast @ Mattina Bella. A Discovery: Opal Basil.[/title] I ask Mary Leigh if she and The Boy would like breakfast with the old man, and they do. It's been many weeks since the last time. Mattina Bella's usual fine work. Mary Leigh gets a two-egg (small) "Country Boy" omelette. That sounds like a contradiction, but the name refers to its inclusion of all the meats in the house. It's Mary Ann's favorite. One of my favorites is before me: fried eggplant at the bottom, covered by Italian sausage, slices of tomato, topped with poached eggs and hollandaise. Nobody does this kind of breakfast cookery better. Mary Ann joins me on the radio show as co-host for the second time. We have one problem to overcome: we both are primary voices, and we have to learn how to let the other person take over in turn. But I think she adds a new dimension, and she is having fun doing it. Afterwards, she says that she wants to have dinner in a restaurant that is 1) different and b) nice-looking. We go through the list, then one of us thinks of Opal Basil. I have heard nothing but good reports about it during the six or so months it's been open. It's in an easy location to miss: across a side street from the Mandeville Trailhead. Downstairs, under the name "Viva Foods," chef-owner Michael Vasquez serves salads, sandwiches, desserts, coffee, ice cream and the like. The real action--and what we came for--is upstairs. Although it's only open for dinner three nights a week, that is enough to nearly fill the place. We run into Don and Andrea Smith, who we have not seen in a few years. They have come with us on a couple of our cruises, and we go to know them well enough that we had dinner with them now and then. They live more in Baton Rouge than here, is why we don't see them often. We join them at their Opal Basil table, where they are already indulging in foie gras and a few other small plates. These seem to comprise most of the menu, and are more ambitious than I expected. There's even a chef's tasting menu. The $37 repast has four courses, described as follows: "Seafood. Chicken. Beef. Sweet." When I ask the waiter to vouchsafe some details, he says, "I don't know what will come to the table until it comes to the table," he says. [caption id="attachment_46182" align="alignnone" width="260"] Cornbread with sauce.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_46180" align="alignnone" width="300"] The chicken dish from the tasting menu.[/caption] This is hard to resist for me, especially given the price. While we're waiting, we have some cornbread covered with a creamy, lightly citrusy sauce. Then a kind of gratin of feta cheese with crabmeat and two sauces, set in an avocado. The chicken course combines white meat with chicken sausage, a brown sauce, and som citrus again. All of this is wonderful. The steak is an offbeat cut--I think I heard flatiron, but it's hard to keep track when even the waiter isn't sure what the kitchen is doing. There's a slice of griddled cheese atop the two slices of beef, with a poached egg on top of the whole assembly, with what tastes like bearnaise--and very good at that. [caption id="attachment_46178" align="alignnone" width="238"] The beef on the tasting menu.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_46179" align="alignnone" width="300"] Shrimp brought together with some other things.[/caption] Mary Ann gets an equally hard-to-describe pile of shrimp and vegetables. She likes it as well as I have liked my parade of courses. [caption id="attachment_46175" align="alignnone" width="300"] Blueberry bread pudding.[/caption] Dessert is a rich bread pudding topped with blueberries and a sauce anglais. Again, I'm not sure if I have all that right, but I do know that it was very good. The tasting menu comes with a choice of two beverages: two glasses of wine, two cocktails, or one and one. I am on the latter program, with the cocktail being an interesting merger: a satsuma Sazerac. On my second trip here--which will probably take place soon--I will take better notes than I did tonight. It's maddening to not have even sketchy definitions of the food. But it's worth the tradeoff for this great eating. We sure are getting a lot of good new North Shore eateries lately. [title type="h5"]Opal Basil. Mandeville: 690 Lafitte St. 985-778-2529.[/title]